“America Coughs, And We Catch a Cold”: Mapping the Relationship between the American Far Right and British and European Activism

This chapter surveys around 100 years of transnational exchanges found in a wide variety of far-right politics in America and Europe. Focusing primarily on British and American connections, it maps how ideas, and shared political cultures, have repeatedly developed over this period. These interchanges have helped inform phenomena as varied as antisemitic conspiracy theory culture, varieties of fascism, variants of neo-Nazism, forms of Holocaust denial cultures, iterations of populist Islamophobia and the rise of accelerationist terrorism. It concludes that understanding the historical contexts of such transnational activism helps bring into focus some areas of particular concern today. These include mainstreaming extreme-right agendas in ways that pose real risks to liberal democracy, and the specific security risks posed by accelerationist terrorism. These are district phenomena, but both have a transnational, transatlantic dimension.