Serbian Far-Right and It’s Connections to European and US Nationalist Parties and Movements

With the intention to understand the effects of the migration crisis on social and political climate in the Western Balkans, I spent three months in Serbia in the summer of 2017. During this time, I conducted interviews with community leaders, representatives of NGOs, government officials who have been working with the refugees and migrants since the beginning of the migration crisis, migrants and refugees in asylum and community centers, as well as the representatives of the far-right movements who have been vocal about the migration crisis. My initial findings pointed to low anti-immigration activity on the ground as most far-right movements interviewed had not defined their stance on migration related issues. Most well established nationalist parties and far-right movements and organizations avoided the migration related questions as they were still in the process of strategizing best approach to the issues that came out of the migration crisis and their political potentials and consequences.

Due to the relatively low activity of nationalist parties and far-right movements on the ground, I set out to explore online presence of the far-right and anti-immigration movements in Serbia. Growing influence of the European movements and their utilization of social media pushed me towards several well-established Facebook pages that propagated anti-immigrant sentiments and strong nationalist policies in Serbia. After establishing communications with several of the admins of the anti-immigration Facebook pages, I was introduced to an interesting network of anti-immigration activists in Serbia and Europe and the US who are closely connected with nationalist parties and movements and whose main platform is based on the idea of national rebirth. It turned out that, even though anti-immigration movement is not very active in Serbia at the moment, the idea of protection of national identity and disappointment with European Union and its “failed multiculturalism” are of great interest to Serbian far-right movements. Serbia, on the other hand, is of interest to the anti-immigration and nationalist movements in Europe and the US because it represents “fertile ground for national rebirth.” These two reasons present a strong motivation behind creation of network of Western Balkan and European and US far-right movements and the migration crisis and the issues that emerged out of it seem to be one of the main catalyzers for collaboration. Therefore, this project seeks to use social network analysis to portray and analyze a small part of a larger global network of the far-right movements that strongly reemerged as a result of anti-immigrant sentiment born out of the most recent migration crisis.

Main Research Question

What is the degree of connectedness and cooperation of anti-immigrant far-right organizations from Serbia with organizations in Europe and the US?

The goal of this research question is to obtain insights into general activity and patterns of communications between the Serbian anti-immigrant and far-right movements with similar European and US movements and nationalist parties.

The purpose of the project

In recent years, Europe has experienced a massive influx of refugees from Middle Eastern and African regions, mainly due to civil wars and economic stagnation in these areas. In Western Europe this influx peaked in 2015 when chancellor Angela Merkel decided to admit the entry of Syrian refugees stuck in South-East European countries. These developments have been accompanied by a steep rise in popularity of nationalist parties and movements across Europe and the United States. Use of social media was strongly leveraged to communicate the messages to followers and to foster a strong sense of community of movements and people fighting for a common cause. This global unification of the far-right has started affecting the nature of nationalist movements in Serbia as well. Previously concerned with exclusively Balkan oriented policies and disputes with the neighboring countries, the “new far-right” of Serbia is much more connected with European and US movements as a result of the migration crisis and the “solidarity” that the movements have started cultivating under the pretense of the need for protection of national borders and return to traditional values.

SNA has been used for a long time to analyze terrorist networks and movements, but it is yet to be fully utilized when analyzing far-right nationalist movements and parties. One of the reasons for this is that the far-right movements have not been fully recognized as a security risk in the US or in Europe up until very recently. It has been apparent from the events that have occurred recently that far-right extremism presents a serious domestic concern for countries globally as it exposes the pre-existing internal problems in developed democracies that serve well these movements as they point to the fact that many of the social problems and inequalities even in the most developed liberal democracies are yet to be addressed. Given the potential security threat posed by extremist organizations, it is important that general public as well as the governments and intelligence agencies understand how nationalist parties and far-right movements mobilize and connect both online and offline.

This project will help identify the “new right” on the rise in Serbia and its relationships with the larger network of movements from Europe and the US. Mapping out a part of this network and identifying and characterizing relationships of different movements and parties within it will allow for identification of the most connected movements, potential sources of funds, recruitment strategies, and other important characteristics of the network that can allow for better understanding of ideology and organizational structure of the nationalist subculture.

Data Collection and SNA Methodology

        Data for this project will be collected on two different levels:

1.     Individual Representatives - Through desk review, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews in the field, I will collect data on ties between individuals and their parties and movements. The interviews will allow me to identify and examine the theoretical assumptions about the ideological connections and exploration of individual motivations and experiences and their interpretation of the nature of relationships and connections with the European and US movements and individuals from the far-right. (Most of this data has already been collected, but some additional interviews might be conducted throughout the semester.)

2.     Movement and party connections – A web crawler will collect data on the links between the movements and parties identified through field research. This data will be used for creation of digital maps of the network to show general patterns of cooperation and contestation amongst organizations on the far-right. Centrality measures will be used to identify patterns of communication and the way that network shapes the performance and influence of different movements.

This project will focus on the overall network rather than analysis of individual relationships. The two-level analysis, however, will allow for identification of actors who are at the core of the network of movements identified through field research and how these movements interact and behave.

Given the time constraints, I intent to closely examine only a small part of the network of movements in Serbia and their connections with the European and the US far-right movements and nationalist parties. Through field interviews conducted during the summer 2017, I have identified 10-15 movements and individuals associated with them and they will be the basis from which the online data will be collected to better understand their network.

Limitations and Challenges

        One of the challenges that this project faces is the ever-changing nature of the movements and parties in question. A lot of individuals identified through field research belong to several movements and parties at a time and the movements themselves often change names and disguise their mission by adopting different organizational structure. Even when individuals and movements are identified and their websites are tracked, there will need to be a significant amount of manual tracking of content and continuous monitoring in case that some movements dissolve or get re-branded during the data collection period.