Abstract
This article examines the role played by magazines in the sustaining, recruiting, defining, and defending of a nationalist community within the British far right. In particular, it focuses on John Tyndall’s Spearhead magazine during its period of support for the National Front, perhaps the most prominent and broad-based nationalist movement of the post-war period in Britain. By examining how Spearhead spoke about several key issues – women, homosexuality and faith – the article shows the way magazines bind together a disparate movement that is often small and spread over a geographical distance into a community. Further, the article contends that due to the ostracization from the mainstream that such extreme communities foster, that such communities move beyond surface connections and into para-familial bonds. In making this argument, the article considers the ways that the community is framed around threat and a conspiratorial world war to encourage prioritisation of the nationalist identity and its community, and how the bonds to the nationalist community are deepened through the development of a cultic milieu through the offer of a hidden or sacred truth.
Original language | English |
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Journal | Family & Community History |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Accepted/In press - 14 Feb 2024 |
Data Access Statement
Data Statement: Physical data supporting this publication is stored at the Searchlight Archive that is managed by the University of Northampton, and details on how to access this can be found here: https://www.northampton.ac.uk/about-us/services-and-facilities/the-searchlight-archives/. List of archive boxes consulted from this collection are: SCH/01/Res/BRI/01/001; SCH/01/Res/BRI/01/002; SCH/01/Res/BRI/01/003; SCH/01/Res/BRI/01/004; SCH/01/Res/BRI/13/008; AFOH/01/Res/LEE/13/.Keywords
- Community
- Family
- Para-familial
- Nationalism
- National Front
- Magazines
- Print Culture
- identities
- threat
- British fascism
- Fascism
- Far Right