Social movement research has generally excluded right wing movements as a subject of its research, as Nelson Pichardo has highlighted in his critique of the ‘New’ Social Movement (NSM) paradigm and its theorists, who have been ideologically biased towards movements originating from the ‘left’ (Pichardo 1997). Recently, however, there has been some significant exploration of contemporary right-wing movements. This essay will look at the typologies of right-wing movements created by some of the scholars focusing on this area of study, and attempt to apply mainstream social movement theory to the case study of a right-wing protest in Brazil in 2023, when supporters of ex-president Jair Bolsonaro stormed the Three Powers Plaza in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil.
A major chunk of the scholarship on right wing movements have been geared towards American politics and contexts, although some work has been focused on India and Latin America. This paper has taken into account the discussion on movements in the United States, such as the Ku Klux Klan or the anti-abortion March for Life movement, but attempted to situate it in a more global context.
07/03/2024