Authors

Discussion

This paper will present findings from an Economic and Social Research Council (UKRI) project, which explores Polish immigrants’ involvement in far-right politics in the British context. Based on multi-sited ethnography, in-depth interviews with far-right activists and participant observation in various milieus, the paper we will focus on the supply side – namely, Polish far-right organizations operating in Britain as well as British groups recruiting Polish migrants – and the demand side, that is to say, Polish migrants who engage with far-right politics in Britain. The case is broadly indicative of a wider range of realignments on the far right where selected minorities have increasingly been recruited as potential allies (Leidig 2019; Mulinari and Neergaard 2018; Svraka 2023), but also particularly evocative of the mechanisms accompanying such processes due to ideological and strategic synergies between British and Polish far right actors in transnational political spaces. The paper will present examples on how immigrants become radicalised in far-right politics, and data indicates that it is more about ‘short distance racism’ rather than particular strand of Polish politics that immigrant engage in, embracing what Benedict Anderson calls ‘long distance nationalism’. Most importantly, these political activities need to be seen also through the prism of constructions of white supremacy, which generates the key and frequently asked question whether the European far right is able to create a uniform, pan-European movement threatening the democratic order, or the European far right due to its nationalistic idiosyncrasies is unable to create a uniform front.