Coherent Incoherence

An Anthropology of Far-right Morality

Abstract

In this article, I aim to contribute to the vibrant development of the anthropology of morality by examining the ethical-moral upbringing of the members of a far-right movement. In other words, I focus on a community built on ethical and moral convictions that numerous observers are likely to consider unethical and immoral. Drawing on my research with youth activists, I demonstrate what they find appealing about the radical nationalist, illiberal agenda that their movement espouses, and what a particular take on morality and ethics has to do with it. In doing so, I wish to make both a theoretical and a methodological contribution. In using the notion of «coherence», I reflect on production and performance of moral rules in the context of a community, and on the tension between different value systems that the analysis of such settings demonstrates. Further, I use the reflections on moral coherence to reflect on the limits and affordances of studying morality ethnographically.