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The Radical Right
Biopsychosocial Roots
and International Variations
Klaus Wahl
The Radical Right
Klaus Wahl
The Radical Right

Biopsychosocial Roots and
International Variations
Klaus Wahl
Psychosocial Analyses and Prevention - Information System (PAPIS)
Munich, Germany
ISBN 978-3-030-25130-7 ISBN 978-3-030-25131-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25131-4
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland
AG 2020
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Preface
A specter is haunting the world––the specter of the radical right. The

surge of social and political phenomena like xenophobia, racism, authori-
tarianism, nationalism, right-wing populism, radicalism, extremism, and
violence against asylum seekers, migrants and politicians in many coun-
tries makes citizens, journalists, scientists, and politicians concerned about
the stability of democratic societies. Some authors even consider the pos-
sibility of the abolition of democracy as a result of democratic elections.
What happened in the last years? In Hungary, the right-wing populist
party Fidesz of Viktor Orbán ruled from 1998 to 2002 and again since
2010. In Russia, nationalist propaganda played a role beyond the take-
over of the Crimea in 2014. During his tenure, President Vladimir Putin
has continued to use increasingly populist and nationalistic rhetoric. In
Poland, after being part of a coalition government from 2005 to 2007,
Jaroslaw Kaczyński’s nationalist party Law and Justice has led the coun-
try since 2015. In 2016, the world—including political scientists—was
surprised about the United Kingdom’s nationalistic vote for Brexit and
right-wing populist Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential elec-
tion, which was accompanied by a wave of racist and anti-Muslim rheto-
ric, hate, and violence. In Austria, the presidential candidate of the
populist right Freedom Party of Austria, Norbert Hofer, won nearly half
of the votes. Marine Le Pen’s National Front (since 2018 National Rally)
has attracted a large part of the French population. In the 2017 German
v
vi Preface
federal election the nationalist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) was
the third largest party and the overall winner in parts of East Germany,
where there were also movements like the anti-Islamist PEGIDA
(Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident) with aggres-
sive gestures and slogans against parliamentarians and journalists. In
2017, too, a constitutional referendum in Turkey opened the way for an
autocratic system under nationalist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In
2018, the right-wing populist Italian party Lega formed a coalition gov-
ernment with the populist Five Star Movement in Italy. In 2019, Brazil’s
far-right president Jair Bolsonaro took office and several military officers
were appointed to his cabinet. In the same year, a right-wing extremist
in New Zealand killed 50 Muslim worshippers. This list could
be expanded.
The shadow of the radical right haunting the world feels like déjà vu.
There have been similar specters—from right wing populism to extrem-
ism—as parts of the history of many countries. To name but a few: the
nineteenth and twentieth century saw battles of the North American
right (Protestant groups, Ku Klux Clan, etc.) against racial, ethnic, and
cultural pluralism as well as against political, economic, and cultural
elites. In the twentieth century, Germany’s National Socialists left blood,
death, and devastation in many countries. Even after the Holocaust, rac-
ism and nationalism remained strong ideologies in large parts of the
world. In recent decades, somewhat more moderate forms of the radical
right have spread throughout both sides of the Atlantic—the populist
right. In the twenty-first century, in particular, the terrorist attacks dur-
ing and after 9/11, the financial and economic crises, and the flows of
refugees and immigrants to western countries seem to have been crucial
events that continue to shape the socio-political landscape on the right
side of the political spectrum with radical right-wing parties and move-
ments and influencing the whole political system.
There is a lot of media coverage of populist and radical right parties,
movements, anti-Semitism, anti-Islamism, hate speech, and racially
motivated crimes. Many scientists from history, political science, and
sociology present empirical studies on these phenomena. However, the
question remains—does this amount of research in different countries
(e.g., in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe and the United States)
Preface vii
lead to converging theories and empirical results to explain these phe-

nomena? Unfortunately, there are diverging results and contradictory
theories. This shortcoming was one of the motives for writing this book.
Another motive was that there seem to be two rather separated types of
research. On the one hand, research of academic disciplines like history,
economy, sociology, and political science focus on historical, economic,
social, and political manifestations of the radical right like political par-
ties, movements, and ideologies. They are also interested in possible
causes of these political phenomena like nationalist traditions, economic
crises, immigration, or the failure of governments. On the other hand,
psychologists, behavior scientists, brain researchers, and so forth study
pre-political causes, conditions, catalysts, and triggers of radical right-
wing phenomena like xenophobia, prejudices, and authoritarianism as
well as their roots in personality development, socialization, and evolu-
tion. Would it not be helpful to integrate all these findings into more
comprehensive explanations of political phenomena? Such interdisciplin-
ary (biopsychosociological) models could also disclose strategic factors that
could serve as starting points for preventive measures against xenophobia,
racism, and violence to make prevention more effective. There is a need
for such interdisciplinary, empirically based prevention programs given
that most of the existing measures seem to be primarily inspired by folk
psychology and an overly optimistic belief in political education and wel-
fare programs—and they are not very effective.
Therefore, this book offers a summary of up-to-date international and
interdisciplinary findings on the different forms of the radical right and
their (pre)conditions, causes, catalysts, reinforcers, and triggers.
In hindsight, these ideas would make it appear as if I were planning a
big publication. In fact, my initial aim was rather modest: when compil-
ing literature lists for my university students I did not find articles sum-
marizing the international and interdisciplinary state-of-the-art research
on factors causing radical right phenomena and their psychological cor-
relates, that is, combining findings from social sciences, psychology, and
the natural sciences. Therefore, I intended to write a journal article. But,
alas, I found more and more interesting results of research and I hoped
that my effort to bridge the gap between different sciences could be of
interest for more readers. As the radical right is found in many countries,
viii Preface
particularly in Europe and the United States, I was very glad to gain the
support of experts on these countries. Actually, Britta Schellenberg with
her profound knowledge of the European variations of the radical right
gave me so much helpful information for the chapter on Europe and
comments on other parts of the book that she should have been a co-
author. I was also very glad to gain the support of Heather Painter with
her first-hand knowledge of the United States. She contributed to the
chapter on the United States and improved my English through-
out the book.
During the endless process of writing, authors are isolated at their desk
using a stack of books, papers, memos, a notebook, and the memory
areas of their brains. However, I also received many suggestions: to
explore the causes of political phenomena in a vertical or interdisciplinary
dimension, that is on the different layers of the psyche and societies, in my
research in recent decades I have been working with political scientists,
historians, sociologists, statisticians, psychologists, educationalists,
behavior scientists, brain researchers, and biologists in studies on xeno-
phobic and right-wing extremist violent offenders and on the develop-
ment of aggression and prejudice among children and adolescents. In
addition, in a horizontal or international dimension, lots of ideas, ques-
tions, and criticism from conferences and discussions with scientists,
politicians, ministry officials, police officers, representatives of NGOs,
from university seminars, courses for kindergarten and school teachers,
and social workers from Moscow to Washington, DC and from Stockholm
to Brasília have left their mark on this text. I am deeply grateful to Lerke
Gravenhorst, Uwe Haasen, Melanie Rhea Wahl, and the anonymous
reviewers for helpful comments on draft versions of parts of this book.
Last but not least, I want to thank Sharla Plant and Poppy Hull at Palgrave
Macmillan for supporting this project and for helping me throughout the
publishing stages from proposal to final publication.
Munich, Germany Klaus Wahl

September 2019
Contents
1 The Radical Right: More than a Topic of Political Science 1

1.1 An Interdisciplinary and International Approach: Daring
the Impossible? 1
1.2 Problems of Definition: It’s All Greek to Me 4
1.2.1 Right and Left 4
1.2.2 Populism 6
1.2.3 Radicalism and Extremism 7
1.2.4 Xenophobia and Racism 9
1.2.5 Neoliberalism 10
1.2.6 Typologies and Working Definition 11
1.3 The Spectrum of the Political Right 14
References 16
2 Fear, Hate, and Hope: A Biopsychosociological Model of

the Radical Right 21
2.1 Basic Theoretical Assumptions: In the Beginning Was
Fear 21
2.1.1 The Emotional Appeal of the Radical Right 21
2.1.2 Politicization of Biopsychosocial Mechanisms 29
2.2 Elements of an Empirically Based Model: Step-by-Step 34
ix
x Contents
2.3 Political Manifestations and Psychological Syndromes:

Supply and Demand 37
2.3.1 Political Manifestations of the Radical Right:
The Supply Side (a) 37
2.3.2 Psychological Key Syndromes, Traits,
Mechanisms, and Behavior Patterns Associated
with the Radical Right: The Demand Side (b) 39
References 51
3 Psychological and Biological Factors: From Personality

Back to Evolution 61
3.1 Gender, Personality, Perception, and Reaction
Patterns (c) 61
3.2 Personality Development and Socialization (d) 69
3.3 Biotic Influences (e) 78
3.4 Evolution of Biopsychosocial Mechanisms (f ) 83
References 92
4 Sociological and Historical Factors: From the Present

Society Back to History111
4.1 Demand Side: Current Socio-economic and Cultural
Factors (g1) 111
4.2 Supply Side: Political Factors (g2) 120
4.3 Media and Political Interpreters (h) 124
4.4 Socio-economic, Cultural, and Political History (i) 133
4.5 Social Circuits (k) 139
4.5.1 Reciprocal Effects: Ideology Strikes Back 139
4.5.2 Demand-Supply Interaction 141
4.6 Interim Results and the Alluring Double Promise of the
Radical Right 144
References150
Contents xi
5 The Radical Right in Europe: Variations of a Socio-political

Phenomenon167
5.1 The Same and Yet Different? Contemporary
Manifestations of the Radical Right Across the
Continent (a) 167
5.2 Socially Anti-Modern Ideology 170
5.3 Attitudes, Discourses, and Actions 173
5.3.1 Racism, Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and Hate
Speech174
5.3.2 Political Attitudes 177
5.3.3 Violence and Terrorism 178
5.4 Social Formations: Political Parties, Movements, and
Groups181
5.4.1 Western Europe 181
5.4.2 Central and Eastern Europe 193
5.5 Elections 202
5.6 Transnational Political Contagion and Connections 202
References206
6 The Radical Right in Europe: Sociological and Historical

Causes and Conditions221
6.1 Demand Side (g1) 223
6.2 Supply Side (g2) 239
6.2.3 East-West Differences 251
6.3.1 Mass Media and the Internet 254
6.3.2 Political Parties and Leaders 258
6.4 The Two Histories of the Radical Right in Europe (i) 260
6.4.1 Western Europe: From the Old Extreme Right to
the New Populist Right 260
6.4.2 Central and Eastern Europe: From Old
Historical Remnants to Recent System Change 264
xii Contents
6.5 Interim Results: The Radical Right in Europe 270

References275
7 Making America Great Again? The Radical Right in the

United States285
7.1 Contemporary Manifestations of the Radical Right in
the United States 285
7.2 Current Socio-economic, Cultural, and Political Factors 290
7.2.1 Demand Side (g1) 290
7.2.2 Supply Side (g2) 298
7.4 History (i) 303
7.5 The Radical Right in the United States: What Next? 307
References309
8 Bundling Insights, Expanding Horizons, and Offering

Solutions319
8.1 What We Have Learned So Far 320
8.1.1 The Deep Roots of the Radical Right 320
8.1.2 The Radical Right on Both Sides of the Atlantic 323
8.2 Populism: Right, Left, and on Other Continents 329
8.2.1 The Double Face of Populism 329
8.2.2 Populism in Other Parts of the World 334
8.3 Common-Sense Assumptions Versus Interdisciplinary
Theories339
8.3.1 The Usual Suspects: Idealist and Economist
Explanations339
8.3.2 Economy, Society, Culture, and Emotions: Are
Soft Factors Harder than Expected? 341
8.4 Breaking the Vicious Cycle? 349
8.4.1 Reasons for Pessimism? 349
8.4.2 We Can Do Something 352
References357
Index369
About the Authors
Klaus Wahl sociologist, conducted many interdisciplinary (biopsycho-

sociological) empirical studies on right-wing extremist offenders and the
development of xenophobia, aggression, and morality in children and
adolescents at the German Youth Institute (Munich), the Hanse Institute
for Advanced Study (Delmenhorst), and the Psychosocial Analyses and
Prevention – Information System (Munich). He was the head of the sci-
entific department of the German Youth Institute (DJI), one of the coun-
try’s largest social research institutes. In addition, he taught at the
University of Munich and other universities in several countries. Among
his most important books are Aggression and Violence (Aggression und
Gewalt, 2013), Skinheads, Neo-Nazis, Followers (Skinheads, Neonazis,
Mitläufer, ed. 2003), Xenophobia(Fremdenfeindlichkeit with Christiane
Tramitz and Jörg Blumtritt 2001); Critique of Sociological Reason (Kritik
der soziologischen Vernunft, 2000), and The Modernization Trap (Die
Modernisierungsfalle, 1989).
Heather Painter political scientist, worked at Washington & Jefferson

College and the Universities of Arkansas (USA), Munich (Germany), and
Vienna (Austria) on questions of the radical right before becoming legis-
lative assistant at the United States House of Representatives.
xiii
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 The populist triangle (based on Berbuir et al., 2015) 7

Fig. 1.2 Spectrum of the political right 15
Fig. 2.1 Biopsychosociological model of the radical right 36
Fig. 5.1 Historical-socio-economic-cultural-political model of the radi-
cal right in Europe 169
Fig. 5.2 Electoral success of populist to extreme right parties in Europe
Percentage of votes gained by populist to extreme right parties
in last national parliamentary elections (as at September 1,
2019): 30.0+ 20.0–29.9 10.0–19.9 <10.0 No
or very low vote share Data from: Parties and Elections in
Europe (2019) and Internet research. © K. Wahl 2019 203
xv
1
The Radical Right: More than a Topic
of Political Science
1.1 n Interdisciplinary and International

A
Approach: Daring the Impossible?
The surge of xenophobia, nationalism, racism, authoritarianism, right-
wing populism, and extremism in many countries aroused the interest of
social and political scientists. Even natural sciences’ flagship journal
Nature has expressed worry about the nationalist surge:
Waves of nationalist sentiment are reshaping the politics of Western

democracies in unexpected ways (…) Many economists see this political
shift as a consequence of globalization and technological innovation over
the past quarter of a century, which have eliminated many jobs in the West.
And political scientists are tracing the influence of cultural tensions arising
from immigration and from ethnic, racial and sexual diversity.” The long-
running World Values Survey shows that people are increasingly disaffected
with their governments and more willing to support authoritarian leaders.
While the Nazis took advantage of the aftermath of World War I and a
global depression, today’s populist movements are growing powerful in
wealthy European countries with strong social programs. “What brings
about a right-wing movement when there are no good reasons for it?”
(Tollefson, 2016, p. 182)
© The Author(s) 2020 1

K. Wahl, The Radical Right, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25131-4_1
2 K. Wahl
Some authors locate the dissatisfaction with the democratic system (Foa
& Mounk, 2017) in the larger development of a global recession of
democracies since 2006 and a deepening of authoritarianism (Diamond,
2015). Could it be that racist and authoritarian attitudes and political
preferences for populist right-wing parties have reached a critical mass in
quite a number of countries, a tipping point, whereby sufficiently large
minorities can change political cultures (Centola, Becker, Brackbill, &
Baronchelli, 2018)? Others criticize this pessimistic view (Levitsky &
Way, 2015).
For a long time, political science, history, sociology, psychology, and
even biological sciences have tried to find obvious conditions, not so
obvious preconditions, and deeper causes of these right-wing manifesta-
tions with divergent research paradigms and unconnected findings,
which have resulted in questionable proposals for prevention. Therefore,
this book has several aims:
• First, in view of the terminological confusion in the field of political,

public, and scientific discourse on phenomena of the radical right
(populism, radicalism, extremism, racism, etc.) will try some termino-
logical clarifications (Chap. 1).
• Second, in order to avoid simple theses such as “capitalism leads to fas-
cism” or “Eastern Europe’s authoritarian socialism resulted in right-
wing radicalism” the book tries to integrate the current findings of the
historical, social, psychological, and biological sciences to explore the
complex and deep roots of radical right-wing phenomena in a system-
atic way. Usually handbooks include research results of various disci-
plines unconnected in separate chapters. In contrast, this book
attempts to show some connections between political, historical, socio-
logical, psychological, and biological factors and mechanisms. The
empirical findings of this vertical analysis shall fill a biopsychosociological
model of the radical right. In so doing, this review not only focuses on
the usual suspects like economic, social, and political factors, but also
on pre-political factors causing psychosocial syndromes (e.g., xeno-
phobia, authoritarianism) and their evolutionary roots and mecha-
nisms that make people susceptible to radical right ideologies. Some
processes between the different factor levels are reciprocal; therefore,
no simple reductionist explanation of “higher” by “deeper” factors is

sought. Such methodologically sophisticated studies on the develop-
ment of right-wing radicalism in individuals and in general are usually
carried out on limited populations in individual countries, cities, or
universities. This approach is comparable to the “biopsychosocial
model” in medicine (Needham et al., 2016), to evolutionary multi-
level sociology (Bühl, 1982) and to the “depth-sociological” vertical
integration of multi-level causes, mechanisms, and their interactions
in social phenomena (Wahl, 2000). Of course, it is a long route from
evolution and genes to political preferences or “the individual steps by
which genetics connect to neurotransmitter systems which connect to
cognitive and emotional processing tendencies which connect to val-
ues and personality traits which connect to orientations to bedrock
principles which finally connect to preferences on specific political
issues of the day” (Smith, Oxley, Hibbing, Alford, & Hibbing, 2011,
p. 388). All these biotic and psychic processes are embedded in socio-
economic and cultural environments (and their historical back-
grounds), which function as triggers and catalysts of those processes.
In addition, this review elucidates the radical right ideologies’ attrac-
tiveness for different personalities in different socio-economic and cul-
tural situations. A better knowledge of this psychosocial “demand” for
security and well-being, on the one hand, and the “supply” of radical
right-wing ideologies and politicians promising security and easy solu-
tions, on the other hand, could also inspire more effective prevention
programs (Chaps. 2, 3 and 4).
• Third, previous research was focused on political parties of the radical
right. Social movements and the interaction between electoral politics
and other forms of political mobilization (e.g., racist violence) have
received relatively little attention (Muis & Immerzeel, 2017).
Therefore, this book offers an international comparison of various polit-
ical phenomena of the radical right (political parties, movements,
groups, voters, prejudices, violence) in a horizontal perspective with foci
on Western, Central, and Eastern Europe and the United States, their
different histories, probable causes, and current developments. Such
international comparisons are based on political opinion polls, elec-
tion results, studies on the history, political systems, and political
4 K. Wahl
c ultures of the countries, but they usually do not cover deeper indi-
vidual psychological and biological factors (Chaps. 5, 6 and 7).
• Fourth, the book will confront empirical research findings with some
of the “usual suspects” of the causes of the radical right, which are fre-
quently discussed in public: are the main culprits only “hard” factors
such as globalization with the consequences of low wages, unemploy-
ment, or economic inequality? How important are “soft” factors like
emotions, views of life, and cultural change? To what extent do objec-
tive and subjective aspects affect political processes? In addition, there
are some short glances to other parts of the world and to the differ-
ences between the radical right and the radical left. Finally, the book
offers—along the various levels of our biopsychosociological model—
a sketch of possible approaches to political and pedagogical measures
for the prevention of xenophobia and right-wing ideologies (Chap. 8).
1.2 roblems of Definition: It’s All Greek

P
to Me
An initial question is if there is a common denominator or definition of
phenomena named right-wing populism, right-wing radicalism, right-
wing extremism, or the far right for the past and the present? The phi-
losopher Friedrich Nietzsche warned that social phenomena, their
interpretations, and definitions are fluid in history, “only something
which has no history can be defined” (Nietzsche, 2006, p. 53).
Nevertheless, many attempts have been made to define radical right-wing
and similar ideologies and social entities. The result is “conceptual confu-
sion” in the “messy field” of studies on the European radical right
(Arzheimer, 2019).
1.2.1 Right and Left
Historically, the political distinction between left and right began with the
seating arrangements of the delegates in the National Assembly during
the French Revolution. For Lipset, Lazarsfeld, Barton, and Linz (1962,
p. 1135) “right-wing” means supporting a traditional hierarchical social

order and opposing change toward equality; “left-wing” means advocating
social change in the direction of greater equality. However, later left-wing
governments showed tolerance for inequality as well; many communist
countries had hierarchies of privilege (Greenberg & Jonas, 2003).
There was a lot of debate over the extreme forms of Fascism and
National Socialism, their common and their different features. For some
authors, National Socialism is a special case of Fascism, others point to
important differences like racism or the role of the state. To mention just
two ideas characterizing the fascist ideology in the broader sense: “The
first relates to the basic nature of the community. Fascism was primarily
concerned with building, or reviving the nation (…) The second part
relates more to socioeconomic policy (…) a ‘Third Way,’ neither left nor
right, neither capitalist nor communist.” Fascists “sought to achieve indi-
vidual prosperity, but linked to communal goals” (Eatwell, 2003, p. 14).
As for contemporary history, there are difficulties when attempting to
classify political positions on the traditional scales of right and left. In
Beyond Left and Right Giddens (1994) noticed that present-day conserva-
tism became radical and socialism became conservative. Conservatives
embrace what they once repudiated: competitive capitalism and neolib-
eralism stimulating processes of dramatic and far-reaching change. Many
conservatives are now active radicals against tradition, which they previ-
ously held most dear. Conservatism and neoliberalism are contradictory
because, on the one hand, neoliberalism is hostile to tradition as a result
of the promotion of market forces and an aggressive individualism. On
the other hand, it depends upon the persistence of tradition for its legiti-
macy and its attachment to conservatism in the areas of the nation, reli-
gion, gender, and the family. Without having a proper theoretical
rationale, its defense of tradition in these areas tends to take the form of
fundamentalism as, for example, in the debate about “family values”. In
contrast, the left seeks mainly to conserve, trying to protect, for example,
what remains of the welfare state (Giddens, 1994, pp. 2–9). Beyond the
traditional western classification of the political right versus the political
left, in some parts of the world other differences can be more important,
for example religious versus secular political parties or ethnic versus all-
encompassing parties.
6 K. Wahl
1.2.2 Populism
Another widely discussed phenomenon or ideology is (right-wing and

left-wing) populism (from Latin populus, people). At first view, populism
as such seems to be the idea of the formal nucleus of democracy. It refers
to the people or citizens of a state in terms of demos, a political unit, hold-
ing the political power (sovereignty), for example, as a result of a revolu-
tion of underprivileged classes longing for equal rights. From this point
of view, the raise of political populism in the modern sense could indicate
problems of established democratic systems, measured by the degree of
“democracy” or political representation of the people’s interests, with
politicians and political parties alienated from the people.
However, when populism is restricted to an ideological, Manichean
and moralizing construction of good and evil in terms of “we, the people”
against a “conspiring elite”, many authors described it as a specific way of
seeing democracy that exalts the opinion of a romanticized common
sense of the majority as a volontè générale. This ideology is particularly
tempting as long as a populist party is not yet part of a government.
Populism is opposed to the pluralism of opinions and treats dissent as
suspect and dangerous. Whereas full ideologies like liberalism, socialism,
and conservatism were characterized as systems of thought offering spe-
cific, practical policy solutions to a broad range of aspects of life, popu-
lism was described as a “thin-centered ideology” representing an approach
to the political world that has only limited applicability and therefore can
be associated with different specific (right, left, etc.) ideologies (Freeden,
1998; Hawkins, Riding, & Mudde, 2012; Mudde, 2004, pp. 543–544,
2015, p. 433).
When the ideology of “we, the people” is restricted to one’s own ethnic
group (ethnos) seen as a homogeneous entity (“Volkskörper”) and defined
by a shared (real or constructed) ancestry or cultural heritage, emphasiz-
ing the distance to a “corrupt elite” as well as superiority to other groups,
minorities, or nations (“outsiders”) and arousing resentment against
them, it can be a threat to social and international peace. In this case, it
is right-wing populism. Figure 1.1 shows the relations in a “populist tri-
angle” based on a suggestion of Berbuir, Lewandowsky, and Siri (2015).
Political Elites Outsiders

Right-wing populism
Populism
„The people“
Fig. 1.1 The populist triangle (based on Berbuir et al., 2015)
Populist right-wing parties are a widespread and not overtly violent

form of political organizations. They were found to be based on a combi-
nation of nativism (nationalism, “own people first”, xenophobia), author-
itarianism (belief in a strictly ordered society), and populism (antagonistic
groups of “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite”) combined with anti-
pluralism, with examples including the Freedom Party of Austria
(Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ), the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de
Vrijheid, PVV) in the Netherlands, and the Northern League (Lega Nord,
LN, later abbreviated to Lega) in Italy (Mudde, 2011, p. 12; Muis &
Immerzeel, 2017; Müller, 2016). There is a scientific controversy on the
question of whether all such parties embrace market-liberal positions on
economic distribution (Kitschelt, 2007). In any case, parties like the Swiss
People’s Party (Schweizerische Volkspartei, SVP) and the Austrian FPÖ show
populism directed against the welfare state (von Beyme, 2015, p. 17).
1.2.3 Radicalism and Extremism
Today, a common element of radical right programs is to establish social

inequality in the relations between in-group and out-groups as well as the
economic and social exclusion of out-groups. The radical right drama-
tizes several threats against their nation’s identity, first of all immigration,
in particular, from Muslim countries (Rydgren, 2018, p. 2). These narra-
tives identify “immigration as a threat to the prosperity, health and cul-
tural integrity of their respective nations” (Hogan & Haltinner, 2015,
p. 536). Rydgren subsumed such parties under the label of radical right-
8 K. Wahl
wing parties and added emphasis on ethno-nationalism rooted in myths

about the distant past and the wish to return to traditional and authori-
tarian values (e.g., law and order, traditional family). For these parties,
individual rights are secondary to the goals of the nation (Rydgren,
2007). Furthermore, they propose ethno-pluralism, the separation of dif-
ferent peoples, in order to preserve their “unique national characters”
(Rydgren, 2013, p. 3). There is also significant overlap between populist
right-wing and conservative discourses on gender, race, and migration.
For these political camps, feminism, gender-equity laws, and multicul-
turalism are presented as challenging the social order (Blee & Creasap,
2010; Erel, 2018). However, right-wing radical groups are not only reac-
tionary, they are also open to new technologies and sometimes even con-
tain quite progressive social programs. The Fascist regime in Italy and the
Nazis in Germany became “the most violent rationalistic modernizers of
their respective countries in spite of ideological commitments to an
organic society” (von Beyme, 2013, p. 1). Today right-wing radicals
extensively use modern social media.
According to Rydgren (2018, p. 2), most of the supporters of the radi-
cal right do not usually oppose democracy per se, but they are typically
hostile to the way existing democratic institutions actually work. In some
countries (and by some authors), right-wing radicalism is distinguished
from right-wing extremism, for example, for state authorities in Germany
“extremism” includes positions outside the democratic consensus and
anti-constitutional elements (Minkenberg, 2011, p. 40). At the end of the
right-wing spectrum, there is violence and terrorism from the Ku Klux Klan
in the United States to Breivik’s mass killing in Norway or the serial mur-
ders of the National Socialist Underground group in Germany. There is no
consensus of scientists or political institutions about the definition of “ter-
rorism” (Laqueur, 2000, p. 6), but the most frequent elements of many
definitions are violence or threat of violence, coercion, intimidation, and
so on against governments, elites, or society (Hoffman, 2006, pp. 31–34;
Schmid & Jongman, 1988, pp. 5–6; Walter, 1969, p. 7). When national-
ism, racism, authoritarianism, and the suppression of human and civil
rights are enforced and organized by violent means in all sectors of a soci-
ety and a state with one strong leader, we could speak of the totalitarian
right as in the case of the former National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
1.2.4 Xenophobia and Racism
A key element of radical right patterns of emotions, thoughts, and ide-

ologies is xenophobia, but there is also confusion about this term. The
English word “xenophobia” originates from the Greek term for the fear of
strangers, a compound word of ξένος (xenos) meaning “stranger” or “for-
eigner”, and φόβος (phobos) meaning “fear”. However, in Anglo-
American literature “xenophobia” is also used to indicate hostility towards
strangers. Therefore, in order to avoid confusion between the opposite
emotions of fear and hostility, the latter should refer to Greek expressions
like ἔχθρα (echthra) meaning “hostility” or ξενοκτονία (xenoktonia)
meaning “killing of strangers” (Wahl, 2005, p. 59). In this book, the term
xenoktonia is used to name strong hostility towards and violence against
strangers. In right-wing ideologies xenophobia is often connected to the
aversion towards groups perceived as different from the own one (in-
group) like immigrants, disabled people, LGBT minorities, and the
homeless. This syndrome has also been called “group-focused enmity”
(Zick et al., 2008).
Racism, another term without a consistent definition, could approxi-
mately be seen as a social construction or an ideology dividing humans
into separate (pseudo-)biological entities (“races”), implying a link
between inherited physical traits and traits of personality, intellect, moral-
ity, and other cultural and behavioral features. Racism also pretends the
idea that some races are innately superior to others (cf. Smedley, 2017).
In the last decades, the confusing term “cultural racism” was used to
describe ideologies that replaced (pseudo-)biological criteria of inequality
by cultural ones. “Othering” or “cultural vilification” as discrimination of
other groups seems to be more adequate terms. Today “racism” is often
used indifferently to describe all kinds of hostile or negative feelings and
actions of one ethnic group toward another (Fredrickson, 2015, p. 1),
One should also take into account that terms like “race” or “racist”
could have somewhat divergent meanings in different languages and
countries. For example, in Germany with its Nazi past the term “race”
(Rasse) could evoke connotations different from those in other countries
and in other languages: in Germany, “race” was used by the Nazis in fic-
10 K. Wahl
tional ways to distinguish groups like Aryans, Jews, and so on, and could
still influence some peoples’ current associations of the word. Unlike the
word “race” in US usage, the German word “Rasse” is discredited in
Germany, the category has been disputed as relevant or real. Altogether,
in Continental Europe, the word “race” seems to maintain an unbreak-
able tie to the history of racism, and thus the term as an analytical tool to
describe American or other societies would be problematic (Berg, Schor,
& Soto, 2014).
1.2.5 Neoliberalism
The economic policy program of the radical right is often associated with
neoliberalism, a term that has changed its meaning historically. Originally,
neoliberalism referred to economic ideas that grew out of debates of
French, German, Austrian, and other economists and intellectuals in the
late 1930s. They wanted to create a new liberalism in contrast to social-
ism and laissez-faire liberalism, with free enterprise and competition as
well as a strong impartial state. Later this was also called the “social mar-
ket economy”, the basis for the German economic miracle
(Wirtschaftswunder) after World War II. Since the early 1980s, however,
neoliberalism became a term to describe the wave of market deregulation,
privatization, and welfare-state withdrawal that swept the world. At that
time, Chile’s Pinochet regime was influenced by the “Chicago Boys” and
became something like the neoliberal laboratory, a test case for policies
inspired by radical laissez-faire capitalist ideas that were later reproduced
around the third world. Nowadays, the term neoliberalism is used across
many social science disciplines except in economics where it has disap-
peared. Furthermore, it is often used as a pejorative term to criticize many
manifestations of modernity or capitalism (Venugopal, 2015) or even as
a signifier simply for “things we don’t like” (Cahill, Cooper, Konings, &
Primrose, 2018, p. xxvii). In the focus of most definitions, at least, neo-
liberalism seems to be a set of ideas and policies aimed at installing mar-
kets as the main mechanism for coordinating societies (Birch, 2015).
Such a simple definition should suffice, if one calls the economic-political
ideas of the radical right parties “neoliberal”, because it allows many vari-
ations. Indeed, the economic policies of these parties have ranged from
libertarian to socialist. Nowadays, most populist right parties support a
hybrid socio-economic agenda, which combines calls for fewer rules and
lower taxes with economic nationalism and welfare chauvinism (protec-
tion of the national economy, support for welfare provisions primarily for
“natives”). They accept inequality, as a “natural” phenomenon, which
should not be “legislated away” by the state (Afonso & Rennwald, 2018;
Bobbio, 1997; Mudde, 2017, p. 5).
1.2.6 Typologies and Working Definition
In order to avoid “quasi-Platonic” definitions like the “essence of Fascism”

some scientists proposed situational and comparative definitions of the
populist, radical, or extreme right (e.g., being more hostile than other
political parties) (Merkl & Weinberg, 2014, p. 18). Other authors
pointed at the political strategies that appeal to people on the losing side
of social processes who are threatened by losses in terms of labor, income,
or prestige. Radical right-wing politicians want to act as advocates of
these (potential) losers of the globalized economy. Their main target
groups in Western Europe are people from the lower and lower-middle
class, and, in Eastern Europe, from a broad middle class (Langenbacher
& Schellenberg, 2011, p. 13). In the United States, right-wing populist
movements historically tried to reflect the interests of middle- and
working-class Whites, who were afraid to lose their status and resented
the power of elites over them as well as of outsiders of the elite itself who
bid for more power (Berlet & Lyons, 2000, p. 2).
All in all, there is much confusion about the terminology. In English
literature, we find terms like ultra-conservatism, the far right, the populist
right, the populist radical right, the radical right, the extreme right, the
violent or terrorist right, and so on. The same political parties are described
by some authors as (ultra-)conservative or populist, by others as radical
or extreme.
Since the 1970s, Kitschelt and McGann (1995) counted three forms
of new radical right parties in Western Europe: neo-Fascists, resembling
the old Fascist parties, the new radical right, and populist parties. Going
12 K. Wahl
more into details, Minkenberg (2011) differentiated four ideological types

of the radical right in Europe since the 1990s:
• An autocratic-fascist right wing with racism, ethnocentrism, and an

ideological proximity to the fascist and autocratic regimes of the inter-
war period; for example, political parties like the German National
Democratic Party (NPD), the British National Party (BNP), the Italian
Social Movement (MSI), or the Hungarian Jobbik;
• a racist or ethnocentric right wing with an agenda of ethnic segregation,
the superiority of their own ethnicity or an “ethnopluralist” argument
for the incompatibility of cultures and ethnicities; for example, the
French Font National (FN), the Italian Northern League (LN), or the
Belgian Flemish Block (VB);
• an authoritarian-populist right wing with internally authoritarian
structures focused on a charismatic leader and populist discourse that
excludes specific groups; for example, the Alliance for the Future of
Austria (BZÖ) or the Hungarian Fidesz;
• a religious-fundamentalist right wing that uses primarily religious argu-
mentation to defend the “purity” and superiority of its own culture or
own people; for example, the League of Polish Families (LPR).
Besides the political parties of the radical right, there are social move-
ments, organizations, and subcultures like groups of neo-Nazis or local
movements against mosques (Minkenberg, 2011, pp. 45–46, 2013,
pp. 13–16) or the anti-Islamist German PEGIDA.
The Chapel Hill Expert Survey tried to estimate party positioning on
policy issues for national parties in a variety of European countries
(Hooghe & Marks, 2017). In a similar way and using proposals from
several authors, we suggest working definitions for the broad spectrum of
ideologies and organizations studied here, which are arranged on a scale
of increasing radicalism and violence:
• Right-wing populist parties distinguish “we, the people”, firstly, from a

“corrupt elite” and, secondly, as one’s own ethnic group with a national
culture (“Leitkultur”) superior to other groups, minorities, religions,
or nations. These parties favor referenda in addition to parliamentari-
anism, economic protectionism, and express skepticism about supra-

national organizations.
• Extreme right parties are characterized by their rejection of liberal
democracy, expressed in ideologies, which are anti-pluralist, anti-
minority rights, and anti-parliamentary added by a nativist national-
ism, an anti-immigrant program, and an authoritarian law and order
doctrine. These parties use some democratic means of political partici-
pation, for example, contesting elections.
• Violent and terrorist right groups and perpetrators use premeditated
threats, physical violence, and terrorist attacks against the government,
elites, minority groups, political adversaries, or public places to reach
right-wing extremist goals.
• Totalitarian right parties are nationalist, racist, authoritarian, anti-
democratic, and use violent repression. They differ from other right
parties because they don’t accept democracy and disregard democratic
means of political participation, for example, contesting elections (cf.
Arendt, 1973; Mudde, 2015, p. 433; Ravndal, 2016; Werkmann &
Gherghina, 2018).
Of course, it is sometimes difficult to make a clear distinction between

(ultra-)conservatives and the populist right or between the populist right
and the extreme right. In Rydgren’s (2018, p. 3) terms, many of the “radi-
cal right-wing” social movements are situated on the border between the
“radical right” and the “extreme right”, and several representatives and
activists of some “radical right-wing” parties and movements maintain
contacts with the “extreme right”.
Discussing the social conditions in which the radical right appears, for
Minkenberg right-wing radicalism can be defined as “the radical effort to
undo or fight (…) social change by radicalizing inclusionary and e xclusionary
criteria”. The radical right responds to the social differentiation of society in
modernization processes by the alternative draft of a national community
and confronts the modern individualization (growing individual auton-
omy, status mobility, and role flexibility) with a return to traditional roles
and status. The radical right ideology centers around a myth of a homoge-
neous nation and is directed against the liberal, pluralistic democracy with
its principles of individualism and universalism (Minkenberg, 2008,
14 K. Wahl
pp. 12–13). Other authors add that the main topics of this political camp
are the attempts to offer solutions for socio-political crises: first, a crisis of
distribution concerning the welfare of the lower and lower middle class;
second, a crisis of political representation as a critique of the corrupt politi-
cal elite by the “man in the street”; third, a crisis of identity in the face of
globalization and immigration. The radical right reacts to these crises by
making use of social issues, by painting politics as corrupt and by propagat-
ing ascriptions of national identity (Langenbacher & Schellenberg, 2011).
We summarize the considerations of many political scientists and soci-
ologists in the following working definition: ideologies of the radical right
emphasize social and economic threats in the modern and postmodern
world (e.g., globalization, immigration). The radical right also promises
protection against such threats by an emphatic ethnic construction of
“we”, the people, as a familiar, homogeneous in-group, anti-modern, or
reactionary structures of family, society, an authoritarian state, national-
ism, the discrimination, or exclusion of immigrants and other minorities
(cf. Wahl, Ottinger-Gaßebner, Kleinert, & Renninger, 2005, p. 19).
While favoring traditional social and cultural structures (traditional fam-
ily and gender roles, religion, etc.) the radical right uses modern tech-
nologies and does not ascribe to a specific economic policy; some parties
tend toward a liberal, free-market policy, and others more to a welfare
state policy. Finally, the radical right can be scaled by using different
degrees of militancy and aggressiveness from right-wing populism to rac-
ism, terrorism, and totalitarianism.
All in all, the radical right can be seen as a revolt against parts of social
modernity, but not against all forms of economic and technical modernity.
Seen in this way, it’s about a halved anti-modern ideology.
1.3 The Spectrum of the Political Right

A typology of right-wing manifestations (ideologies, organizations,
groups, actors) from conservative and moderate to extreme, violent, and
totalitarian forms with smooth transitions between them is sketched in
Fig. 1.2. It must be emphasized that economic policies and welfare poli-
cies (e.g., welfare state versus free market economy) of different parties of
Center right Degrees of the radical right
Conservatives and Violent and terrorist

Populist right Extreme right Totalitarian right
ultra-conservatives right
Radicalization of ideology
Increasing acceptance or use of violence
Conservatives (and The populist right favors The extreme right rejects The violent and the terrorist The totalitarian right is
particularly ultra- well-being of the majority of liberal democracy, right use threat, physical nationalist, racist,
conservatives) favor “hard working ordinary pluralism, immigration, and violence, or terrorist attacks authoritarian, anti-
continuity and stability, want people” against immigrants parts of parliamentarianism. against the government, democratic (does not
to retain the traditional and a “corrupt elite.” Claims Favors nativist nationalism, elites, minorities, or any accept concept of
social order and culture a guiding traditional national authoritarian law and order persons to reach extremist democracy and elections).
(traditional families, culture (“Leitkultur”) against against people outside of its goals. Propagates aggressive
religion). Defend a guiding influences from abroad and own norms. Uses some Examples: Historical Ku exclusion of foreigners and
national culture (“Leitkultur”) sub-cultures (LGBT, etc.). democratic means of Klux Klan, Norwegian mass social minorities. Wants to
against influences from Favors law and order and political participation, e.g. killer Breivik, German control all sectors of a
abroad, but they are in favor referenda. Economic contesting elections. National Socialist society. Has a dictatorial
of international exchange policies from neoliberalism Examples: Former Italian Underground cell. leader.
and cooperation (EU). to protectionism. Skepticism Social Movement, Greek Example: Former
Economic policies from about supranational Golden Dawn; Hungarian National Socialist German
neoliberalism to social organizations (UN, EU). Jobbik; Bulgarian Ataka; Workers’ Party.
market economy. Examples: French National Democratic Party
Examples: United States’ National Front/National of Germany.
Republican Party; British Rally; Freedom Party of
Conservative Party; Austria, Swiss People’s
German Christian Social Party, Alternative for
Union. Germany.
1 The Radical Right: More than a Topic of Political Science
© K. Wahl 2019
Fig. 1.2 Spectrum of the political right

15
16 K. Wahl
the radical right are quite independent of this scale. Some parties tend
toward a liberal, free-market policy, and others more to a welfare state
policy, and some adopt a mixture of both. While favoring traditional
social and cultural structures (traditional family and gender roles, reli-
gion, etc.) the radical right uses modern technologies (social media, etc.).
Since there have been various attempts to define phenomena on the
right-wing political side, and since there is a broad spectrum of such
political phenomena, we pragmatically propose a broad but graduated
scale. We call the part of the political spectrum at the right side of conser-
vatism degrees of the radical right. The gradations are based on the degrees
of ideological radicalism and militancy (against outsiders, democratic prin-
ciples, nativism instead of cosmopolitism, etc.) as well as the degree of
approval or use of violence. Center-right and conservative programs and
parties will only be mentioned in passing in this book.
We have to add that there is no consensus among authors about how to
categorize many of the political parties of the political right as conservative,
populist, radical, or extreme parties. On the one hand, this is due to the
mixture of positions in the political programs of the parties; on the other
hand, politicians of the same party can speak and act more or less mili-
tantly in contrast to the party’s program. In other words, the same political
party is described as populist by some authors but as extremist by others.
In order not to overstretch the scope of this book, we focus on the
widespread political ideologies, parties, and movements of the populist and
extremist right. Phenomena of the violent, terrorist, and totalitarian right
are only secondary topics.
Throughout this book “the radical right” is used as a shorthand term cover-
ing all variations from the populist to the totalitarian political right, if there
is no other specification. When referring to specific authors, however, usually
their own terms are used without re-categorization.
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2
Fear, Hate, and Hope:
A Biopsychosociological Model
of the Radical Right
2.1 asic Theoretical Assumptions:

B
In the Beginning Was Fear
2.1.1 The Emotional Appeal of the Radical Right
The ideologies of the radical right are clearly expressed by their leaders.
Geert Wilders, the chairman of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands,
warned against the dangers of Islam: “The reality is that Islam commands
its followers to make all nations submit to Islamic Sharia law, wherever
and whenever they have the power and the opportunity to do so. If neces-
sary through the use of violence and terror. The reality is that Sharia law
is a mortal danger to our way of life, our Constitution, our laws, and our
liberties. It is a matter of our existence and the survival of our free society
(…) We should not be so tolerant that we open the door to the horror of
intolerance” (Wilders, 2015).
Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front in France, blamed global-
ization and immigration for the economic decline of her country: “We
are in a world where globalization, which is an ideology, has forgotten,
and put aside (…) the people’s interests, aspirations, and dreams. (…)
The economic state of France is as if we had suffered a war (…), with
© The Author(s) 2020 21

K. Wahl, The Radical Right, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25131-4_2
22 K. Wahl
great economic losses, entire sectors have disappeared, the toy industry,
the clothing industry, the jewelry industry, all of it has collapsed (…)
What is sure, is that France has been a victim of an absolutely anarchic
immigration. An absolutely massive immigration, for decades now” (Le
Pen, 2016).
Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary, warned against terror-
ists, who would come as immigrants: “Nowhere do human rights pre-
scribe national suicide. Terrorists are also arriving in Europe among the
illegal immigrants, and as a result in a number of European countries
innocent people have died (…) We shall protect our country’s borders,
we shall protect our own lives, and we shall protect the security of our
everyday lives (…) The migration pressure on Hungary’s borders will not
end within the next few years. There are hundreds of millions of people
standing ready to follow those who have been setting out in the hope of
a better life” (Orbán, 2016).
In his inaugural address, Donald J. Trump, President of the United
States, also warned of influences from abroad and promised a golden
future: “For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the
rewards of government while the people have borne the cost (…) Mothers
and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories
scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation (…) and the
crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed
our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage
stops right here and stops right now (…) We must protect our borders
from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our
companies, and destroying our jobs (…) We will bring back our jobs. We
will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth. And we will
bring back our dreams” (Trump, 2017).
The inaugural address of Jair Messias Bolsonaro, President of Brazil,
was like an echo of Trump’s speech: “I stand before the whole nation, on
this day, as the day when the people began to free themselves from social-
ism, the reversal of values, state gigantism and the politically correct.
Elections gave voice to those who were not heard (…) We cannot allow
disastrous ideologies to divide the Brazilians. Ideologies that destroy our
values and traditions, destroy our families, the foundation of our society
(…) For a long time, the country was governed according to party
2 Fear, Hate, and Hope: A Biopsychosociological Model… 23
interests other than that of Brazilians. Let’s restore order in this country”
(Bolsonaro, 2019, translated by the author).
Mass immigration, Islam, Sharia, terrorists, millions of people waiting
behind the borders, collapsed industries, destroyed jobs and families,
disastrous ideologies, widespread poverty, crime, and drugs—it is a
threatening world painted by populist and extremist right-wing politi-
cians. And it is a golden future they are promising when in power. Why
are these accusations and hopes so persuasive for many people?
• First, the accusations often contain a grain of truth, or even more: in

fact, some societies, a number of regions and groups are suffering from
economic crises. In fact, globalization brought the breakdown of some
industries in developed countries. In fact, automation and digitaliza-
tion cut jobs. In fact, there are urban districts with unemployed immi-
grants and high crime rates. In fact, some Islamist terrorists came to
Europe as refugees. In fact, there are corrupt politicians, influential
lobbyists, and dubious elites. However, the propaganda of the radical
right takes such processes, structures, and events as pars pro toto,
expanding observations from the breakdown of one industry sector to
all the other sectors, from a group of poor families to all families, from
an Islamist terrorist to all Muslim refugees, from some self-serving
politicians to the whole political class.
• Second, the radical right’s rhetoric tries to invoke fear (object-related,
in face of imminent threat) and anxiety (diffuse, in face of uncertain
threat). It is the anxiety of those left behind in the progress of wealth
that they will remain in their bad positions. It is the fear of those who
are well off but worry about future competition with immigrants. It is
reinforcing the mood of generally anxious personalities. Ruth Wodak
(2015) spoke of “The politics of fear”. Fear and anxiety are perhaps the
oldest and most influential of all emotions shaping humans’ feelings,
thoughts, and behaviors.
• Third, radical right-wing politicians distract from complex systemic
relations in economy, society, and politics by simplifying and personal-
izing them. Reduction of complexity and simple explanations easily
reach the minds of people.
24 K. Wahl
• Fourth, radical right ideologies exculpate people from their possible

own human weakness by accusing scapegoats for causing problems and
turning anger, hate, and aggression towards them.
• Fifth, the radical right offers antidotes to the problems: the hope for a
better life of the poor, robbed, exploited native people by closing bor-
ders against immigrants, and protection against foreign companies
and the control by supranational institutions like the European Union.
Furthermore, they promise law and order, a return to the “good old
times” with traditional families and values, the expulsion of a ruling,
corrupt elite, and the resurrection of a proud nation.
Invoking fear, hate, and hope is the winning formula of the populist and
extremist right. While it is not restricted to this political family, it is done
here with missionary zeal, triggering strong emotions and menacing
psycho-social mechanisms like xenophobia, scapegoating, and possibly
violence against foreigners and other social minorities. “The tendency to
convert issues into ideologies, to invest them with moral color and high
emotional charge, invites conflicts which can only damage a society”
(Bell, 1955, p. 27). What are the mechanisms that connect the structures
and processes of economy, society, culture, and the political system with
the political motives of the individuals? How do these mechanisms func-
tion? Why do they have such a power to influence the feelings, thoughts,
and political behavior of people?
How and why do certain social situations trigger politically relevant
emotions? How do radical right politicians exploit these triggers? What
makes the radical right dangerous? These questions cannot simply be
answered on the level of political phenomena, factors, and relations. The
analyses also have to include pre-political levels.
As human beings and political citizens, we like to think we are edu-
cated, well-informed, rational, calculating, planning, and moral per-
sons, considering a wide horizon of facts, norms, and values in order
to shape our political preferences and prepare our decisions, for exam-
ple, to vote for a specific political party, or to enter politics—the
ideal of Homo politicus. However, in contrast to widespread wishful
thinking, in most spheres of everyday life—including the political
behavior of ordinary citizens—humans are rarely deliberately, rational
thinkers, and actors. A great deal of our daily behavior is based on
subjective, often biased perceptions, preconscious automatic processes, out

of habit, and is frequently triggered by soaring emotions rather than by
accurate cognitions. Instead of carefully and rationally weighing the pros
and cons of a political decision (e.g., voting for a political party) most
people follow other (often non-political) influences, impressions, memo-
ries, impulses, and emotions, for example, which could result in sympa-
thizing with a charismatic political leader. To name but a few results of
empirical research: as to elections, studies revealed that incidental exposure
to environmental cues triggering emotions (like the national flag) shaped
political choices without participants’ awareness (Hassin, Ferguson,
Shidlovski, & Gross, 2007). Other studies showed that political prefer-
ences were hardly deliberate decisions but were considerably shaped by fast,
automatic mental processes. Neuroscientific experiments demonstrated
how neural responses in distinct brain areas predicted automatic political
preferences for politicians and political parties even in the absence of con-
scious deliberation and attention (Tusche, Kahnt, Wisniewski, & Haynes,
2013). Rapid judgments of the competence of political candidates based
solely on their facial appearance could reliably predict the outcome of elec-
tions (Ballew & Todorov, 2007). In addition, many researchers found—
with some international variations—basic personality traits (individual
patterns of emotion, cognition, and behavior) linked to political prefer-
ences for specific ideologies: for example, curious persons who were open
to experience, new ideas, and approaches tended towards political posi-
tions of the left, persons who were conscientious, organized, reliable, and
hard-working tended towards the political right (Fatke, 2019).
Therefore, in order to understand the attractiveness of manifestations
of the radical right, their ideologies or organizations, one should not only
look at the cognitive content of their programs but also at the persuasive
appeals, emotions, and preconscious automatic mechanisms evoked by
them in specific personalities. This is also suggested by broad psychologi-
cal and neurological research on the primacy of affects and emotions for
human thinking and behavior (Roth & Strüber, 2014, pp. 377–378;
Zajonc, 1984):
• Psychologists describe affects as preconsciously triggered, very fast,

short, physical and psychic reactions to (vitally) important events with-
26 K. Wahl
out complex cognitive processes (e.g., increased heart rate, fearful

arousal at the sight of an aggressor motivating a fight or flight response).
• Emotions are physical and psychic arousals with more complex reac-
tions to important events in the environment or to one’s own needs
and thoughts. Emotions, then, motivate a person to adequate behavior
(e.g., antipathy induces avoidance of somebody).
• The term feeling refers to subjective perceptions of emotions.
• Moods refer to long-term emotional states (e.g., sadness). Lasting
moods can express themselves in the temperament of a person (e.g.,
anxiousness) (Wahl, 2015, p. 24).
From an evolutionary point of view, affects and basic emotions serve for
survival and can help to pass on genes: we are sexually attracted by a
potential partner and fall in love in order to realize reproduction; we fear
in order to flee from a threat; we get angry in order to fight against an
aggressive enemy. Besides such basic emotions there are many others,
including learned cultural variations (e.g., romantic love; hate against
people with different faith).
In terms of evolution, fear is a basic emotion motivating the avoidance
of risks. Studies have found fear and anxiety circuits in the brains of ani-
mals and humans to deal with threats in their environments, originated
as responses to predators, cliff edges, and other environmental dangers.
While fear is a response to clear and present environmental dangers, anxi-
ety is a response to situations with uncertain, unpredictable, or uncon-
trollable environmental threats (Kurth, 2016; LeDoux, 2012). During
the long time of evolution, animals and humans also developed social
emotions to conspecifics, which involved reproductive advantages: on the
one hand, the security of an in-group was associated with positive emo-
tions toward close relatives and other familiar persons within the group.
On the other hand, there were ambivalent emotions against unfamiliar
people, strangers, and out-groups: first, risk-avoiding skepticism or xeno-
phobia with selective advantages through avoiding dangerous pathogens
in contact with strangers as well as risky social conflicts; second, situa-
tions of being threatened by strangers or offering a chance of domination
or gaining resources could result in combating strangers (xenoktonia);
and third, curiosity and interest for strangers could lead to exchange,
cooperation, love, and sexual relations (xenophilia) offering learning, pro-

ductivity, and genetic variability through new mating opportunities
(Aarøe, Osmundsen, & Petersen, 2016; Barbarino & Stürmer, 2016;
Bischof, 2012, p. 211). A mixture of these different emotions and behav-
ioral potentials accompanied the evolution of humans.
At this point we can build a bridge from psychology back to politics, where
the main passions have been called fear and hope—in case of the radical
right, this means to evoke fear of foreigners, indicting immigrants to be
scary persons who should be fought against (Mouffe, 2014) and anxiety
in face of economic and social change, globalization, and so on. As a
political antidote, the radical right mobilizes hope for security, prosperity,
and national glory in a homogeneous society. In her book Political
Emotions, Martha C. Nussbaum wrote: “Fear is very useful, indeed neces-
sary. It steers us away from danger. Without its promptings, we would all
be dead. Even in the political and legal realm, fear can be reasonable, giv-
ing good guidance.” However, she adds “Natural fears (…) can be useful,
but they can also be exploited”, for example, people may learn by associa-
tion to fear certain minority groups (Nussbaum, 2013, pp. 320–321).
Therefore, in a nutshell, one of the radical right’s tricks is to exploit old
evolutionary emotions, biopsychosocial coping mechanisms, and risk-
avoidance for threatening situations, stored in early developed brain cir-
cuits, by reinforcing or creating fears of strangers and other possibly
threatening objects and processes (economic, technological, social, and
cultural change). Fear of strangers as a key starting point for racism and
radical right ideologies is one of the leitmotifs for the following multi-
level presentation of research findings. But like in music, there are many
other motifs. A focus of this chapter is to examine the emotions and
mechanisms underlying the radical right in general and to give a sum-
mary of recent research on the social, psychic, and biotic factors that
make persons and their emotional needs more or less prone to such
ideologies.
Of course, political phenomena, processes, and behavior cannot be
explained only or directly by evolutionary mechanisms, but they offer
basic factors and switching points that form a substructure for the func-
tioning of psychic, social, economic, and cultural forces shaping the
political sphere. Furthermore, the other way around, such surface factors
28 K. Wahl
can trigger deep evolutionary mechanism as in the case of political pro-

paganda evoking fear of strangers, in particular, in personalities that are
already overly prone to fear.
Systematically speaking, the winning formula of fear, hate, and hope
and additional elements of radical right-wing ideologies focus on a double
emotional process:
• On the one hand, they evoke or refer to negative emotions: threat, fear,
anxiety, frustration, disorientation, and resentment in the modern and
postmodern social world triggered by economic crises, low wages,
unemployment, immigration, and further possibly negative impacts of
globalization, European integration, social change, value pluralism,
and so on. Furthermore, the radical right accuses persons, groups, or
institutions of causing these threats (e.g., foreigners, an incapable gov-
ernment, the establishment, or “corrupt elites”). They do not only
frame society by emphasizing (at least some) inequalities between peo-
ple, genders, ethnic groups, races, nations, and religions, but also dis-
criminate and exclude out-groups (xenophobia, anti-Semitism,
anti-Islamism, etc.), and exhibit hostility towards ethnic, cultural, reli-
gious, economic, and LGBT minorities. They criticize modern values
(individualism, universalism, pluralism) and degrade—with variable
degrees—achievements of modern democracies like civil rights, equal-
ity before the law, and power sharing.
• On the other hand, radical right-wing ideologies promise positive emo-
tions, well-being, identity, and hope: protection against social threats,
feelings of security, nostalgia for the good old days, longing for pre-
modern social structures, for example, familiar in-groups with social
cohesion and solidarity, traditional morals, law and order, and a simple
world view. They offer hope for a better future for losers of socio-
economic processes by simple policies favoring the in-group (ethno-
centrism, nationalism) and a homogeneous national community, as
well as by pushing away immigrants from the labor market and the
benefits of the welfare state. They favor law and order and an
authoritarian state with a strong leader as sources of security. Parts of
the radical right allow the use of violence to attain their goals, which is
attractive for persons who like to act on aggressive impulses.
These two emotional processes are connected, and it is hypothesized that

they fulfill relevant psychic and social functions for individuals and social
systems, particularly in puzzling and threatening situations: feelings of
insecurity, disorientation, and anxiety can lead to a search for security,
clarity, quick and simple solutions. In addition, they can stimulate coping
mechanisms and strategies on biotic, psychic, and social levels to over-
come the threat. Radical right ideologies politicize these coping mecha-
nisms, as will be shown below in detail.
2.1.2 Politicization of Biopsychosocial Mechanisms
Mechanisms for coping with risks and tensions in the psyche or the brain,
with conflicts between different needs, emotions, or cognitions, as well as
between personality and society, within and between groups have been
developed during evolution and are still serving for motivating the behav-
ior of modern humans in risky situations. Such mechanisms have been
discussed for a long time in psychology and sociology.
In psychology, Sigmund Freud (Freud and Strachey, 1964) and Anna
Freud (1993) considered defense mechanisms (regression, repression, etc.)
as protecting the ego against threat and anxiety. The list of mechanisms
and similar theoretical concepts was extended by Bischof ’s “Zurich model
of social motivation” with biopsychic homeostasis mechanisms providing
individual security by controlling the behavior toward social objects.
Specific behavior (distance vs. contact with strangers) depends on the
object’s degree of familiarity and implies according reactions to fear
(Gubler & Bischof, 1991). The fear-affiliation hypothesis (Schachter,
1959) assumed, based on results of social experiments, that in case of
threat and fear persons tend to affiliate with other persons. Whereas this
fear-triggered mechanism refers to the in-group, another mechanism
stimulated by fear relates to out-groups: persons with high degrees of
social fear have more negative out-group opinions (e.g., anti-immigration
attitudes) (Hatemi, McDermott, Eaves, Kendler, & Neale, 2013).
In sociology, an important starting point to consider psychosocial pro-
cesses was the Thomas theorem: “If men define situations as real, they are real
in their consequences” (Thomas & Thomas, 1928, p. 572), that is, even
threats, which are only imagined or caused by belief of political propaganda
30 K. Wahl
can motivate behavior. Later, Parsons, and Shils proposed coping mecha-
nisms in case of (social) threat: dominance, submission, aggression, and
withdrawal accompanied by Freudian defense mechanisms for the benefit
of ego’s personality (Parsons & Shils, 1962, pp. 140–141). Bühl, in his
evolutionary theory of social behavior, suggested that new and complex
social manifestations should be explained “from below” and “from the
past”: Starting from evolutionary early, simple, primordial, or prototypical
social forms, roles, situations, etc. that serve as placeholders for later forms.
This should be supplemented by new evolutionary developments at new
levels (Bühl, 1982, p. 2, 1987, pp. 110–111). Wahl combined several
approaches: first, the subjective-orientated social research following the
Thomas theorem (behavior depends on the subjective perceptions of the
world) (Wahl, Honig, & Gravenhorst, 1982); second, similar to Bühl’s
intentions, a biopsychosociological or “depth sociological” approach that sug-
gested a cybernetic model of social behavior as an extension of Bischof’s
“Zurich model” by including mechanisms from evolutionary biological
remnants (fight, flight, cooperation, etc.) up to factors of the social and
cultural situations and their perceptions (norms, emotion codes, role expec-
tations, perceptual patterns, etc.) (Wahl, 2000, pp. 341–359, 2002b). Such
collections of biotic, psychic, and social mechanisms to cope with situa-
tions of (real or imagined) threat lend themselves to construct a theoretical
multilevel model to explain a great deal of radical right phenomena.
According to these preliminary works, we hypothesize that reactions to
social threat can be arranged in several clusters with evolutionary back-
grounds deeply rooted in brain circuits (associable with elements of right-
wing ideologies):
• A first set of reactions involves emotions, cognitions, motivations, and

behaviors regarding the relations between in-groups (community, tribe,
nation, majority society, own race) and out-groups (foreigners, other
nations, social minorities like homosexuals or the homeless). Out-groups
are seen in a perspective of ethnocentrism and often blamed for their
dangerousness, unfamiliar culture, competing for the same resources, or
as scapegoats causing problems for one’s own life. The function of hostile
protection against out-groups and rule-breakers can be fueled by own
frustrations, fear of competition, and the defense of the own status.
• A second set of reactions includes emotions, cognitions, motivations,

and behaviors related to the in-group (hierarchy: trust in strong leader-
ship, obedience to leader, rally round the flag; solidarity: social cohe-
sion, altruism; power: feeling of security, national pride, etc.). Their
function is to provide safety for the in-group and their own authorities.
• A third set of reactions covers various forms from verbal to physical
aggression used to enforce hierarchical structures, to punish norm vio-
lators, and as defensive or offensive violence against out-groups
(xenoktonia).
Altogether, such reactions to social threat could be associated with ultimate

causes for behavior in threatening situations as hypothesized by evolutionary
biology: by providing security, defense, or at least feelings of dominance they
offered selective advantages for reproduction in millions of years of animal
and human evolution. They are accomplished by proximate causes like indi-
vidual attributes and experiences (e.g., mental disease; low education) that
trigger the degrees of individual reactions (e.g., more or less xenophobia)
and by situational social conditions (e.g., the society’s unemployment rate)
functioning as threatening stimuli and catalysts of psychosocial processes.
Reactions to threat are often apparently regressive processes like falling back
on former evolutionary or ontogenetic forms of emotions, thought patterns,
behaviors, social structures, and cultural patterns. This is illustrated by
research on violent radical right-wing adolescents (skinheads): when meet-
ing ethnic strangers these young people emotionally regressed to strong
affects like rage. Cognitively, they fell back on simple, binary distinctions,
like “good White men” versus “lazy Black men”. Socially, they regressed to
simple forms of groups with authoritarian structures, rough male manners,
and sharp distinction between in-group and out-groups. Culturally, they
reactivated old nationalistic myths, rituals, and hymns of hate against for-
eigners. In behavior, they jumped back to old evolutionary (re)actions like
aggression against foreigners (Wahl, Tramitz, & Blumtritt, 2001, p. 114).
Radical right-wing ideologies do not only politicize such regressive
mechanisms by pointing to possibly threatening socio-economic situa-
tions (e.g., globalization, immigration) and dramatizing them. In addi-
tion, they offer a simply structured worldview and a kind of regressive
hope by ostensible solutions like a lost paradise or a “regressive utopia” in
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I may add that both the birds alluded to have been familiar to my
friend, from personal observation in both islands.
The appellation by which the Mango Humming-bird is familiarly
known to the negroes in the colony, is that of “Doctor bird,” which,
however, is sometimes applied also to Polytmus. It is thus explained
by Mr. Hill:—“In the old time, when costume was more observed than
now,—the black livery among the gayer and more brilliant Trochilidæ
represented the Doctor. It might with equal propriety have been the
parson; but parsons were less known than doctors, in the old times
of the colony.”
Though occurring at all seasons, I have not found the Mango
abundant at any; it is, indeed, far less common than either Polytmus
or Humilis. It affects the lowlands in preference to the mountains,
and open places rather than the deep woods; yet it is rarely seen to
suck the blossoms of herbs or shrubs, as Humilis does, but like
Polytmus hovers around blossoming trees. The bunch of blossom at
the summit of the pole-like papaw-tree (Carica papaya) is a favourite
resort of this species, particularly at sunset. This habit I observed
and took advantage of very soon after my arrival, for there was a fine
male papaw tree in profuse bloom close to the door at Bluefields,
which the Mango frequented. Wishing to keep these birds in
captivity, I watched at the tree one evening with a gauze ring-net in
my hand, with which I dashed at one, and though I missed my aim,
the attempt so astonished it, that it appeared to have lost its
presence of mind, so to speak, flitting hurriedly hither and thither for
several seconds before it flew away. The next evening, however, I
was more successful. I took my station, and remained quite still, the
net being held up close to an inviting bunch of blossom: the
Humming-birds came near in their course round the tree, sipped the
surrounding blossoms, eyeing the net; hung in the air for a moment
in front of the fatal cluster without touching it, and then, arrow-like,
darted away. At length one, after surveying the net, passed again
round the tree; on approaching it the second time, perceiving the
strange object to be still unmoved, he took courage, and began to
suck. I quite trembled with hope: in an instant the net was struck,
and before I could see anything, the rustling of his confined wings
within the gauze told that the little beauty was a captive. I brought
him in triumph to the house and caged him; but he was very restless,
clinging to the sides and wires, and fluttering violently about. The
next morning, having gone out on an excursion for a few hours, I
found the poor bird on my return, dying, having beaten himself to
death. I never again took this species alive.
The sustenance of the Humming-birds is, I feel assured, derived
almost exclusively from insects. That they seek the nectar of flowers
I readily admit, and that they will eagerly take dissolved sugar or
diluted honey in captivity I also know; but that this would maintain
life, or at least vigour, I have great reasons for doubting, which I shall
mention in the history of the following species. I have dissected
numbers of each of our species, and have invariably found the little
stomach distended with a soft black substance, exactly like what we
see in the stomachs of the Warblers, which being put into clear
water, and examined with a lens, proves to be entirely composed of
minute insects. The interior of flowers is almost always inhabited by
very small insects, and it is I believe principally to pick out these that
the Humming-birds probe the tubular nectaries of blossoms. Wilson
has mentioned his having observed the Ruby-throat (T. Colubris)
pursuing flies on the wing. I also have witnessed the same thing in
our species, many times. I have seen the Mango, just before night
fall, fluttering round the top of a tree on which were no blossoms,
and from the manner in which it turned hither and thither, while
hovering in a perpendicular position, it was manifest that it was
catching minute insects. This species when flying often flirts and
flutters the tail in a peculiar manner, throwing it in as he hangs
perpendicularly in mid air, when the appearance of the broad
lustrous feathers, expanded like a fan, is particularly beautiful.
The pugnacity of the Humming-birds has been often spoken of;
two of the same species can rarely suck flowers from the same bush
without a rencontre. Mango, however, will even drive away another
species, which I have never observed the others to do. I once
witnessed a combat between two of the present species, which was
prosecuted with much pertinacity, and protracted to an unusual
length. It was in the month of April, when I was spending a few days
at Phœnix Park, near Savanna le Mar, the residence of my kind
friend, Aaron Deleon, Esq. In the garden were two trees, of the kind
called the Malay apple (Eugenia Malaccensis), one of which was but
a yard or two from my window. The genial influence of the spring
rains had covered them with a profusion of beautiful blossoms, each
consisting of a multitude of crimson stamens, with very minute
petals; like bunches of crimson tassels; but the leaf-buds were but
just beginning to open. A Mango Humming-bird had, every day, and
all day long, been paying his devoirs to these charming blossoms.
On the morning to which I allude, another came, and the manœuvres
of these two tiny creatures became highly interesting. They chased
each other through the labyrinth of twigs and flowers, till, an
opportunity occurring, the one would dart with seeming fury upon the
other, and then, with a loud rustling of their wings, they would twirl
together, round and round, until they nearly came to the earth. It was
some time before I could see, with any distinctness, what took place
in these tussles; their twirlings were so rapid as to baffle all attempts
at discrimination. At length an encounter took place pretty close to
me, and I perceived that the beak of the one grasped the beak of the
other, and thus fastened, both whirled round and round in their
perpendicular descent, the point of contact being the centre of the
gyrations, till, when another second would have brought them both
on the ground, they separated, and the one chased the other for
about a hundred yards, and then returned in triumph to the tree,
where, perched on a lofty twig, he chirped monotonously and
pertinaciously for some time;—I could not help thinking, in defiance.
In a few minutes, however, the banished one returned, and began
chirping no less provokingly, which soon brought on another chase,
and another tussle. I am persuaded that these were hostile
encounters, for one seemed evidently afraid of the other, fleeing
when the other pursued, though his indomitable spirit would prompt
the chirp of defiance; and, when resting after a battle, I noticed that
this one held his beak open, as if panting. Sometimes they would
suspend hostilities to suck a few blossoms, but mutual proximity was
sure to bring them on again, with the same result. In their tortuous
and rapid evolutions, the light from their ruby necks would now and
then flash in the sun with gem-like radiance; and as they now and
then hovered motionless, the broadly expanded tail,—whose outer
feathers are crimson-purple, but when intercepting the sun’s rays
transmit orange-coloured light,—added much to their beauty. A little
Banana Quit, that was peeping among the blossoms in his own quiet
way, seemed now and then to look with surprise on the combatants;
but when the one had driven his rival to a longer distance than usual,
the victor set upon the unoffending Quit, who soon yielded the point,
and retired, humbly enough, to a neighbouring tree. The war, for it
was a thorough campaign, a regular succession of battles, lasted
fully an hour, and then I was called away from the post of
observation. Both of the Humming-birds appeared to be adult males.
I have alluded to the preference which different species appear to
manifest, for different blossoms; I may add that I have observed
Mellisuga humilis come and suck the flowers of a Cashew tree
(Anacardium), without noticing those of the Malay apple close by,
while Mango seems to despise the former for the latter.
The lustrous glow reflected from the sides of the neck of the adult
male, may be unperceived on a careless examination. In such
Humming-birds as I have examined, (perhaps in all,) the iridescence
of those portions of the plumage that are changeable, is splendid in
the ratio of the acuteness of the angle formed by the incident ray and
the reflected one. Thus the plumes of the neck of Mango appear to
advantage in a room with a single light, only when the beholder
stands with his back to the window, and has the bird before him and
facing him. Then the perpendicular band down the throat and breast,
which seems composed of the richest black velvet, is bounded on
each side by a broad band of glowing crimson, mingled with violet. It
must be borne in mind, that some of the brilliant hues of Humming-
birds are permanent, not changeable colours.
I have never met with the nest of this species; but Sam informed
me in June that he had observed one near Morgan’s Bridge, in
Westmoreland. It was on a dead tree, and was placed upon a twig,
but being full fifteen feet from the ground he could not examine it.
He, however, saw the Mango Humming-bird fly out of it, and
presently return. A nest, presented to me by my friend Mr. Hill,
ticketed as that of Mango, is now before me. It has evidently been
constructed to stand upon a horizontal twig, which the bottom has
embraced. It is cylindrical externally, the bottom being nearly flat. Its
height is 1½ inch; its external diameter a little more; its internal
diameter about 1 inch; the hollow, which is a little overhung by the
margin, is cup-shaped, about ⁷⁄₈ inch deep. It is composed almost
entirely of the down of the gigantic silk-cotton tree, (Eriodendron
anfractuosum) intermixed at the bottom with a little true cotton. The
sides are tightly banded round with the threads of spiders’ webs,
very neatly put on, and the whole exterior is studded with a minute
whitish lichen, so profusely as almost entirely to conceal the down,
without at all injuring the symmetry of the form. It is a most compact
and beautiful little structure.
The down of the cotton-tree is the material ordinarily chosen by all
our Humming-birds for the construction of their nests. The tree
attains a giant size and diameter, and throws out to a vast distance
its horizontal limbs, each equalling in its dimensions an ordinary
forest tree. It is one of the few in those tropical islands, which are
deciduous: the fierce blasts called “norths,” which prevail in January
and February, pouring down from the mountains, quickly lay it bare. I
have seen an enormous tree in full foliage, almost leafless in an
hour; the leaves filling the air, like flakes of snow in a driving storm.
While it is yet denuded, the pods appear at the ends of the branches,
resembling green walnuts: these ripen before the leaves bud, and
opening, give freedom to a mass of fine silky filamentous down,
which is borne away upon the wind. The filaments are so fine, that at
this season, April and May, they are imbibed with the air we breathe,
being almost impalpable, and are considered to aggravate
pulmonary affections. The tufts so scattered, the Humming-birds and
others of the feathered tribes, diligently collect, and that not only on
the ground. I have been amused to observe a Mango Humming-bird
suspending himself in the air, over against a puff of down, which was
slowly borne along upon a gentle breeze, picking at it and drawing
filaments from it, doubtless with a view to nest-building.
LONG-TAILED HUMMING-BIRD.[23]
Trochilus polytmus.
Trochilus polytmus, Linn.
Ornismya cephalatra, Less.—Ois. M. xvii.
[23] Male. Length 10¼ inches, expanse 6³⁄₈, tail, longest feather 7½,
outmost feather 1¾, flexure 2⁶⁄₁₀, rictus 1, tarsus ²⁄₁₀, middle toe ⁵⁄₂₀.
Irides black; beak coral-red, the tip black; feet purplish-brown, soles
paler. Crown, hind head, and nape deep velvety black, very slightly
glossed; back, rump, wing and tail-coverts, rich golden-green; wings
purplish-black, the outer edge of the first primary whitish; second primary
longest; tail deep black, with bluish gloss, the uropygials, and the outer
edges of the others glossed with golden-green, varying in intensity. The
tail is slightly forked, the feathers regularly graduating from the uropygials
outwards, save that the outmost but one is exceedingly lengthened.
Throat, breast, and belly gorgeous emerald-green, extending to the
thighs; vent and under tail-coverts, purpled black. The plumage of the
hind head long and loose, descending in two lateral tufts upon the nape,
which are to some extent erectile.
Female, 4¹⁄₈ inches, tail 1⁶⁄₁₀, flexure 2²⁄₁₀. Irides dark brown; beak dull
reddish-brown, black at edges and tip; feet nearly black. Front and crown
dusky brown, scaled, gradually becoming green on the hind head,
whence the whole upper plumage is rich golden-green. Tail blue black,
the exterior two feathers on each side broadly tipped with white:
uropygials golden green; the feathers graduate uniformly. Wings as in the
male. Under parts white, the feathers having round tips of metallic green
on the sides of the neck, and being mingled with green ones on the sides
of the body. The plumage on each side of the nape, erectile, as in the
male, but somewhat shorter.
This is the gem of Jamaican Ornithology. Its slender form, velvet

crest, emerald bosom, and lengthened tail-plumes, render it one of
the most elegant even of this most brilliant family. Though peculiar,
as far as I am aware, to Jamaica, it has long been known, though it
would seem from received figures and descriptions very imperfectly.
Edwards long ago gave a figure of it, which is recognisable. Lesson’s
figure and description are alike bad. The attitude is that never
assumed by a Humming-bird; the back of the neck is made green
instead of black; the scaly emerald plumage is diminished to a mere
gorget instead of extending over the whole breast and belly; the
beak and feet are both made yellow, whereas the former should
have been crimson, the latter purple-black. He makes “Les
Polythmus” his tenth Race, which he thus defines: “Beak short,
straight: the external tail-feathers terminated by two long blades or
filaments (brins).” Here every character is incorrect. The beak,
though not long, is certainly not short; it is not straight, but
perceptibly curved, particularly in the female; the curvature, it is true,
varies in individuals, but I possess several females whose beaks are
more curved than that of Mango; it is not the external tail-feather that
is lengthened, but the second from the outside; lastly, this feather is
not terminated by a filament, or by any structure varying from the
other part; it is simply produced in length.
Mr. Swainson writes as if he were unacquainted with this species,
for in speaking of the tendency of the lengthened external feathers of
the tail in certain families of birds to turn outwards towards their tips,
he observes, “there is one solitary instance where these long exterior
feathers are turned inwards instead of outwards: this occurs in a
Humming-bird figured by Edwards, as a native of Jamaica, but we
have never yet seen it, nor is a specimen known to exist at this time
in any museum.” (Class. Birds, I. 105.) This is no other than
Polytmus; the long tail-feathers of which do bend inwards so as to
cross each other when the bird is resting. I may add here that these
long feathers have the inner edge prettily waved, not by actual
indentation, but by a puckering of the margin, like a frill.
The Long-tail is a permanent resident in Jamaica, and is not
uncommonly seen at all seasons and in all situations. It loves to
frequent the margins of woods and road-sides, where it sucks the
blossoms of the trees, occasionally descending, however, to the low
shrubs. There is one locality where it is abundant, the summit of that
range of mountains just behind Bluefields, and known as the
Bluefields ridge. Behind the peaks which are visible from the sea, at
an elevation of about half a mile, there runs through the dense
woods a narrow path, just passable for a horse, overrun with
beautiful ferns of many graceful forms, and always damp and cool.
No habitation occurs within several miles and no cultivation, save the
isolated provision grounds of the negroes, which are teeming with
enormous Arums: and these are hidden from view far up in the thick
woods.
The refreshing coolness of this road, its unbroken solitude,
combined with the peculiarity and luxuriance of the vegetation, made
it one of my favorite resorts. Not a tree, from the thickness of one’s
wrist up to the giant magnitude of the hoary figs and cotton trees, but
is clothed with fantastic parasites: begonias with waxen flowers, and
ferns with hirsute stems climb up the trunks; enormous bromelias
spring from the greater forks, and fringe the horizontal limbs; various
orchideæ with matted roots and grotesque blossoms droop from
every bough, and long lianes, like the cordage of a ship, depend
from the loftiest branches, or stretch from tree to tree. Elegant tree-
ferns, and towering palms are numerous; here and there the wild
plantain or heliconia waves its long flag-like leaves from amidst the
humbler bushes, and in the most obscure corners over some
decaying log, nods the noble spike of a magnificent limodorum.
Nothing is flaunting or showy; all is solemn and subdued; but all is
exquisitely beautiful. Now and then the ear is startled by the long-
drawn measured notes, most richly sweet, of the Solitaire, itself
mysteriously unseen, like the hymn of praise of an angel. It is so in
keeping with the solitude, and with the scene, that we are
unconsciously arrested to admire and listen. The smaller wood
consists largely of the plant called Glass-eye berry, a Scrophularious
shrub, the blossoms of which, though presenting little beauty in form
or hue, are pre-eminently attractive to the Long-tailed Humming-bird.
These bushes are at no part of the year out of blossom, the scarlet
berries appearing at all seasons on the same stalk as the flowers.
And here at any time one may with tolerable certainty calculate on
finding these very lovely birds. But it is in March, April, and May, that
they abound: I suppose I have sometimes seen not fewer than a
hundred come successively to rifle the blossoms within the space of
half as many yards in the course of a forenoon. They are, however,
in no respect gregarious; though three or four may be at one
moment hovering round the blossoms of the same bush, there is no
association; each is governed by his individual preference, and each
attends to his own affairs. It is worthy of remark that males compose
by far the greater portion of the individuals observed at this
elevation. I do not know why it should be so, but we see very few
females there, whereas in the lowlands this sex outnumbers the
other. In March, a large number are found to be clad in the livery of
the adult male, but without long tail-feathers; others have the
characteristic feathers lengthened, but in various degrees. These
are, I have no doubt, males of the preceding season. It is also quite
common to find one of the long feathers much shorter than the other;
which I account for by concluding that the shorter is replacing one
that had been accidentally lost. In their aerial encounters with each
other, a tail-feather is sometimes displaced. One day several of
these “young bloods” being together, a regular tumult ensued,
somewhat similar to a sparrow-fight:—such twittering, and fluttering,
and dartings hither and thither! I could not exactly make out the
matter, but suspected that it was mainly an attack, (surely a most
ungallant one, if so) made by these upon two females of the same
species, that were sucking at the same bush. These were certainly in
the skirmish, but the evolutions were too rapid to be certain how the
battle went.
The whirring made by the vibrating wings of the male Polytmus is
a shriller sound than that produced by the female, and indicates its
proximity before the eye has detected it. The male almost constantly
utters a monotonous quick chirp, both while resting on a twig, and
while sucking from flower to flower. They do not invariably probe
flowers upon the wing; one may frequently observe them thus
engaged, when alighted and sitting with closed wings, and often they
partially sustain themselves by clinging with the feet to a leaf while
sucking, the wings being expanded, and vibrating.
The Humming-birds in Jamaica do not confine themselves to any
particular season for nidification. In almost every month of the year I
have either found, or have had brought to me, the nests of Polytmus
in occupation. Still as far as my experience goes, they are most
numerous in June; while Mr. Hill considers January as the most
normal period. It is not improbable that two broods are reared in a
season. In the latter part of February, a friend showed me a nest of
this species in a singular situation, but which I afterwards found to be
quite in accordance with its usual habits. It was at Bognie, situated
on the Bluefields mountain, but at some distance from the scene
above described. About a quarter of a mile within the woods, a blind
path, choked up with bushes, descends suddenly beneath an
overhanging rock of limestone, the face of which presents large
projections, and hanging points, encrusted with a rough, tuberculous
sort of stalactite. At one corner of the bottom there is a cavern, in
which a tub is fixed to receive water of great purity, which perpetually
drips from the roof, and which in the dry season is a most valuable
resource. Beyond this, which is very obscure, the eye penetrates to
a larger area, deeper still, which receives light from some other
communication with the air. Round the projections and groins of the
front, the roots of the trees above have entwined, and to a fibre of
one of these hanging down, not thicker than whipcord, was
suspended a Humming-bird’s nest, containing two eggs. It seemed
to be composed wholly of moss, was thick, and attached to the
rootlet by its side. One of the eggs was broken. I did not disturb it,
but after about three weeks, visited it again. It had been apparently
handled by some curious child, for both eggs were broken, and the
nest was evidently deserted.
But while I lingered in the romantic place, picking up some of the
landshells which were scattered among the rocks, suddenly I heard
the whirr of a Humming-bird, and, looking up, saw a female Polytmus
hovering opposite the nest, with a mass of silk-cotton in her beak.
Deterred by the sight of me, she presently retired to a twig, a few
paces distant, on which she sat. I immediately sunk down among the
rocks as quietly as possible, and remained perfectly still. In a few
seconds she came again, and after hovering a moment disappeared
behind one of the projections, whence in a few seconds she
emerged again and flew off. I then examined the place, and found to
my delight, a new nest, in all respects like the old one, but
unfinished, affixed to another twig not a yard from it. I again sat down
among the stones in front, where I could see the nest, not concealing
myself, but remaining motionless, waiting for the petite bird’s
reappearance. I had not to wait long: a loud whirr, and there she
was, suspended in the air before her nest: she soon espied me, and
came within a foot of my eyes, hovering just in front of my face. I
remained still, however, when I heard the whirring of another just
above me, perhaps the mate, but I durst not look towards him lest
the turning of my head should frighten the female. In a minute or two
the other was gone, and she alighted again on the twig, where she
sat some little time preening her feathers, and apparently clearing
her mouth from the cotton-fibres, for she now and then swiftly
projected the tongue an inch and a half from the beak, continuing the
same curve as that of the beak. When she arose, it was to perform a
very interesting action; for she flew to the face of the rock, which was
thickly clothed with soft dry moss, and hovering on the wing, as if
before a flower, began to pluck the moss, until she had a large bunch
of it in her beak; then I saw her fly to the nest, and having seated
herself in it, proceed to place the new material, pressing, and
arranging, and interweaving the whole with her beak, while she
fashioned the cup-like form of the interior, by the pressure of her
white breast, moving round and round as she sat. My presence
appeared to be no hindrance to her proceedings, though only a few
feet distant; at length she left again, and I left the place also. On the
8th of April I visited the cave again, and found the nest perfected,
and containing two eggs, which were not hatched on the 1st of May,
on which day I sent Sam to endeavour to secure both dam and nest.
He found her sitting, and had no difficulty in capturing her, which,
with the nest and its contents, he carefully brought down to me. I
transferred it, having broken one egg by accident, to a cage, and put
in the bird; she was mopish, however, and quite neglected the nest,
as she did also some flowers which I inserted; sitting moodily on a
perch. The next morning she was dead.
On the 7th of May, a lad showed me another nest of the same
species, containing two young newly hatched. It was stuck on a twig
of a seaside grape tree, (Coccoloba), about fifteen feet above the
ground, almost above the sea, for the tree grew at the very edge of
the shore, and the branches really did stretch over the sea. The bird
was wary, and would not return to the nest while I staid there, or
Sam, whom I stationed in the tree to catch her; but on our receding a
few minutes, we found her on the nest. Sam watched sometime
vainly with the insect-net; but as I thought, if I could secure her in a
cage with her nest, the claims of her young would probably awaken
her attention more than the mere unhatched eggs had done the
former one, we proceeded to the tree at night with a lantern. The
noise and shaking of the tree, however, had again alarmed her, (at
least so we concluded,) for she was not on the nest when reached.
The next morning Sam had occasion to pass twice by the grape-tree,
but at neither time was the bird on the nest. Still suspecting nothing,
we went after breakfast, to set a noose of horse-hair on the nest, a
common artifice of the negro boys, to capture small birds when
sitting. On mounting to set it, however, Sam discovered that the nest
was quite empty, no trace of the unfledged young being left. It is
probable that the bird, annoyed at being watched, had removed
them in her beak, a thing not without precedent. Sam assured me,
that if a Bald-pate Pigeon be sitting on a nest containing young, and
be alarmed by a person climbing the tree, so as to be driven from the
nest, twice in succession, you may look for the young the next day,
in vain.
In June I found a nest of the same species on a shrub or young
tree in the Cotta-wood. It contained one egg; I looked at it, and went
a little way farther. In a few minutes I returned; the bird was sitting,
the head and tail oddly projecting from the nest, as usual. I hoped to
approach without alarming it, but its eye was upon me, and when I
was within three or four yards, it flew. I looked into the nest, but there
was no egg: on search, I found it on the ground beneath, much
cracked, but not crushed. How could it have come there? The bush,
to the main stem of which it was attached, was too strong for the
rising of the bird to have jerked it out; beside which, such result was
not likely to happen from an action taking place many times every
day. It must, I think, have been taken out by the bird. I replaced the
cracked egg, and a day or two afterwards, visited it again: the nest
was again empty, and evidently deserted.
On the 12th of November, we took, in Bluefields morass, the nest
of a Polytmus, containing two eggs, one of which had the chick
considerably advanced, the other was freshly laid. The nest was
placed on a hanging twig of a black-mangrove tree, the twig passing
perpendicularly through the side, and out at the bottom. It is now
before me. It is a very compact cup, 1¾ inch deep without, and 1
inch deep within; the sides about ¼ inch thick, the inner margin a
little overarching, so as to narrow the opening: the total diameter at
top, 1½ inch; 1 inch in the clear. It is mainly composed of silk-cotton
very closely pressed, mixed with the still more glossy cotton of an
asclepias, particularly around the edge; the seed remaining attached
to some of the filaments. On the outside the whole structure is quite
covered with spiders’ web, crossed and recrossed in every direction,
and made to adhere by some viscous substance, evidently applied
after the web was placed, probably saliva. Little bits of pale-green
lichen, and fragments of thin laminated bark, are stuck here and
there on the outside, by means of the webs having been passed
over them. The eggs are long-oval, pure white, save that when fresh,
the contents produce a reddish tinge, from the thinness of the shell.
Their long diameter ⁷⁄₁₂ inch; short ⁴⁄₁₂. The above may be
considered a standard sample of the form, dimensions, and
materials of the nest of this species. Variations, however, often occur
from local causes. Thus, in the one from Bognie cave, only moss is
used, and the base is produced to a lengthened point; one of
exceeding beauty now before me, is composed wholly of pure silk-
cotton, bound profusely with the finest web, undistinguishable except
on close examination; not a fragment of lichen mars the beautiful
uniformity of its appearance. Others are studded all over with the
lichens, and these, too, have a peculiar rustic prettiness. The
situations chosen for nidification, as will have been perceived, are
very various.
I have attempted to rear the young from the nest by hand, but
without complete success. A young friend found a nest in June, on a
twig of a wild coffee-tree, (Tetramerium odoratissimum,) which
contained a young bird. He took it, and fed it with sugar and water for
some days, but when it was full fledged, and almost ready to leave
the nest, it died and was partially eaten by ants. It was, however, a
male, and formed an important link in the evidence by which I at
length discovered the specific identity of the female. Latham, it is
true, long ago describes it conjecturally as the female of Polytmus;
but Lesson, in his “Ois. Mouches,” has treated the supposition as
groundless. I may observe that to satisfy myself I was in the habit of
dissecting my specimens, and invariably found, with one exception,
the green-breasted to be males, the white-breasted to be females.[24]
But to return. On the 20th of May of the present year (1846), Sam
brought me the nest of a Polytmus, which had been affixed to a twig
of sweet-wood (Laurus). It contained one young, unfledged, the
feathers just budding, I began to feed it with sugar dissolved in
water, presented in a quill, which it readily sucked many times a-day.
Occasionally I caught musquitoes, and other small insects, and
putting them into the syrup, gave them to the bird; these it seemed to
like, but particularly ants, which crowded into the sweet fluid and
overspread its surface. The quill would thus take up a dozen at a
time, which were sucked in by the little bird with much relish. It
throve manifestly, and the feathers grew apace, so that on the 29th,
after having been in my possession nine days, it was almost ready to
leave the nest. But on that day it died. Another I reared under similar
circumstances, and in a similar way, until it was actually fledged.
When nearly full grown, it would rear itself up, touching the nest only
with its feet, on tiptoe, as it were, and vibrate its wings as if hovering
in flight, for minutes together. At length it fairly took its flight out at the
window. Both these were females.
[24] The exception is, that a specimen obtained on the 6th of May, in
female livery, displayed on dissection two indubitable testes, in the
ordinary situation.
The young male, when ready to leave the nest, has the throat and
breast metallic-green as above, the belly-feathers blackish, with
large tips of green; the tail black with green reflections, untipped. A
male which I obtained in May, and which I take to be the young of
the preceding winter, has the green on the head, mingled with black,
the disks of the feathers being green with a black border. The
emerald green of the breast is partial in its extent, reaching to the
belly only in isolated feathers, separated by large spaces of
brownish-drab; while on the throat and breast, the feathers have
merely large round disks of the emerald-colour, with narrow edges of
brown.
The tongue of this species, (and doubtless others have a similar
conformation,) presents, when recent, the appearance of two tubes
laid side by side, united for half their length, but separate for the
remainder. Their substance is transparent in the same degree as a
good quill, which they much resemble: each tube is formed by a
lamina rolled up, yet not so as to bring the edges into actual contact,
for there is a longitudinal fissure on the outer side, running up
considerably higher than the junction of the tubes; into this fissure
the point of a pin may be inserted and moved up and down the
length. Near the tip the outer edge of each lamina ceases to be
convoluted, but is spread out, and split at the margin into irregular
fimbriæ, which point backward, somewhat like the vane of a feather;
these are not barbs, however, but simply soft and flexible points,
such as might be produced by snipping diagonally the edge of a strip
of paper. I conjecture that the nectar of flowers is pumped up the
tubes, and that minute insects are caught, when in flowers, in these
spoon-like tips, their minute limbs being perhaps entangled in the
fimbriæ, when the tongue is retracted into the beak, and the insects
swallowed by the ordinary process, as doubtless those are which are
captured with the beak in flight. I do not thoroughly understand the
mode by which liquids are taken up by a Humming-bird’s tongue,
though I have carefully watched the process. If syrup be presented
to one in a quill, the tongue is protruded for about half an inch into
the liquor, the beak resting in the pen, as it is held horizontal: there is
a slight but rapid and constant projection and retraction of the tubes,
and the liquor disappears very fast, perhaps by capillary attraction,
perhaps by a sort of pumping, certainly not by licking.
All the Humming-birds have more or less the habit when in flight of
pausing in the air, and throwing the body and tail into rapid and odd
contortions; this seems to be most the case with Mango, but perhaps
is more observable in Polytmus from the effect that such motions
have on the beautiful long feathers of the tail. That the object of
these quick turns is the capture of insects I am sure, having watched
one thus engaged pretty close to me; I drew up and observed it
carefully, and distinctly saw the minute flies in the air, which it
pursued and caught, and heard repeatedly the snapping of the beak.
My presence scarcely disturbed it, if at all.
The neck in these birds is very long; but appears short, because it
forms a sigmoid curve downward, which is concealed by the feathers
of the breast: the trachea is therefore long, and its appearance is
singular, because the dilatation from which the bronchi divide, is near
the middle of the whole length, the bronchi being full half an inch in
length; they run down side by side, however, and are in fact soldered
together for about half of their length: though the tubes are still
distinct, as appears by a transverse section. Our two other species I
have proved to have the same conformation.
When I left England, I had laid myself out for the attempt to bring
these radiant creatures alive to this country: and after a little
acquaintance with the Jamaican species, Polytmus seemed, from its
beauty, its abundance, its size, its docility, and its mountain habitat,
to be the species at once most likely to succeed, and most worthy of
the effort. My expectations were disappointed: yet as the efforts
themselves made me more familiar with their habits, the reader, I
trust, will pardon some prolixity of detail in the narration of these
attempts. Very many were caught by myself and my lads: the narrow
path on Bluefields peak already mentioned, was the locality to which
we resorted on these expeditions. A common gauze butterfly-net, on
a ring of a foot in diameter and a staff of three or four feet, we found
the most effective means of capture. The elaborate traps
recommended by some authors, I fear would suit the natural history
of the closet, better than that of the woods. We often found the
curiosity of these little birds stronger than their fear; on holding up
the net near one, he frequently would not fly away, but come and
hover over the mouth, stretching out his neck to peep in, so that we
could capture them with little difficulty. Often too, one when struck at
unsuccessfully, would return immediately, and suspend itself in the
air just above our heads, or peep into our faces, with unconquerable
familiarity. Yet it was difficult to bring these sweet birds, so easily
captured, home; they were usually dead or dying when we arrived at
the house, though not wounded or struck. And those which did arrive
in apparent health, usually died the next day. At my first attempt in
the spring of 1845, I transferred such as I succeeded in bringing
alive, to cages immediately on their arrival at the house, and though
they did not beat themselves, they soon sunk under the confinement.
Suddenly they would fall to the floor of the cage, and lie motionless
with closed eyes; if taken into the hand, they would perhaps seem to
revive for a few moments; then throw back the pretty head, or toss it
to and fro as if in great suffering, expand the wings, open the eyes,
slightly puff up the feathers of the breast, and die: usually without
any convulsive struggle. This was the fate of my first attempts.
In the autumn, however, they began to be numerous again upon
the mountain, and having, on the 13th of November, captured two
young males sucking the pretty pink flowers of Urena lobata, I
brought them home in a covered basket. The tail-feathers of the one
were undeveloped, those of the other half their full length. I did not
cage them but turned them out into the open room in which the daily
work of preparing specimens was carried on, having first secured the
doors and windows. They were lively, but not wild; playful towards
each other, and tame with respect to myself, sitting unrestrained for
several seconds at a time on my finger. I collected a few flowers and
placed them in a vase on a high shelf, and to these they resorted
immediately. But I soon found that they paid attention to none but
Asclepias curassavica, and slightly to a large Ipomea. On this I again
went out, and gathered a large bunch of Asclepias, and was pleased
to observe that on the moment of my entering the room, one flew to
the nosegay, and sucked while I held it in my hand. The other soon
followed, and then both these lovely creatures were buzzing together
within an inch of my face, probing the flowers so eagerly, as to allow
their bodies to be touched without alarm. These flowers being placed
in another glass, they visited each bouquet in turn, now and then
flying after each other playfully through the room, or alighting on
various objects. Though occasionally they flew against the window,
they did not flutter and beat themselves at it, but seemed well
content with their parole. As they flew, I repeatedly heard them snap
the beak, at which times, they doubtless caught minute flies. After
some time, one of them suddenly sunk down in one corner, and on
being taken up seemed dying: it had perhaps struck itself in flying. It
lingered awhile, and died. The other continued his vivacity;
perceiving that he had exhausted the flowers, I prepared a tube,
made of the barrel of a goose-quill, which I inserted into the cork of a
bottle to secure its steadiness and upright position, and filled with
juice of sugar-cane. I then took a large Ipomea, and having cut off
the bottom, I slipped the flower over the tube, so that the quill took
the place of the nectary of the flower. The bird flew to it in a moment,
clung to the bottle rim, and bringing his beak perpendicular, thrust it
into the tube. It was at once evident that the repast was agreeable,
for he continued pumping for several seconds, and on his flying off, I
found the quill emptied. As he had torn off the flower in his
eagerness for more, and even followed the fragments of the corolla,
as they lay on the table, to search them, I refilled the quill and put a
blossom of the Marvel of Peru into it, so that the flower expanded
over the top. The little toper found it again, and after drinking freely,
withdrew his beak, but the blossom was adhering to it as a sheath.
This incumbrance he presently got rid of, and then, (which was most
interesting to me,) he returned immediately, and inserting his beak
into the bare quill, finished the contents. It was amusing to see the
odd position of his head and body as he clung to the bottle, with his
beak inserted perpendicularly into the cork. Several times, in the
course of the evening, he had recourse to his new fountain, which
was as often replenished for him, and at length about sunset betook
himself to a line stretched across the room, for repose. He slept, as
they all do, with the head not behind the wing, but slightly drawn
back on the shoulders, and in figure reminded me of Mr. Gould’s
beautiful plate of Trogon resplendens, in miniature. In the morning, I
found him active before sunrise, already having visited his quill of
syrup, which he emptied a second time. After some hours, he flew
through a door which I had incautiously left open, and darting
through the window of the next room, escaped, to my no small
chagrin.
Three males, captured on Bluefields peak on the 22nd of April,
were brought home alive. They at once became familiar on being
turned into the room, and one, the boldest, found out immediately a
glass of sugar-syrup, and sipped repeatedly at it. One of them
disappeared in the course of the next day, doubtless by falling into
some obscure corner behind the furniture. The others, however,
appeared quite at home, and one soon became so familiar, even
before I had had him a day, as to fly to my face, and perching on my
lip or chin, thrust his beak into my mouth, and suck up the moisture.
He grew so bold, and so frequent in his visits, as at length to become
almost annoying; and so pertinacious as to thrust his protruded
tongue into all parts of my mouth, searching between the gum and
cheek, beneath the tongue, &c. Occasionally, I gratified him by
taking into my mouth a little of the syrup, and inviting him by a slight
sound, which he learned to understand; and this appeared to please
his palate. Bouquets of fresh flowers they did not appear much to
regard; but one or two species of Lantana seemed more attractive
than the rest. I expected that the honeyed and fragrant bunches of
blossom of the Moringa, which on the tree is perpetually visited by
them, would tempt my captives, but after a brief trial, they
disregarded them. Perhaps it was because they could sate their
appetite more freely and fully at the syrup glass, which they
frequently visited, but only sipped. They always clung to the glass
with their feet, and very often to the flowers also. Each selected his
own places of perching; there were lines stretched across the room,
for drying bird-skins; and from the first each took a place on one of
the lines, distant from the other, where he then invariably roosted,
and rested. Each selected also one or two other stations for
temporary alighting, but each adhered to his own, without invading
his neighbour’s. So strong was this predilection, that on my driving
one away from his spot, he would flutter round the room, but return
and try to alight there again, and if still prevented, would hover round
the place, as if much distressed. This preference of a particular twig
for alighting is observable in freedom, and will suggest an analogy
with the Flycatchers. I have not observed it in our other species. It
gave us a means of capturing many, in addition to the net; for by
observing a spot of resort, and putting a little birdlime on that twig,
we could be pretty sure of a bird in a few minutes. The boldest was
rather pugnacious, occasionally attacking his gentler and more
confiding companion, who always yielded and fled; when the
assailant would perch and utter a succession of shrill chirps, “screep,
screep, screep.” After a day or two, however, the persecuted one
plucked up courage, and actually played the tyrant in his turn,
interdicting his fellow from sipping at the sweetened cup. Twenty
times in succession would the thirsty bird drop down upon the wing
to the glass,—which stood at the edge of a table immediately
beneath that part of the line, where both at length were wont to
perch,—but no sooner was he poised in front and about to insert his
tongue, than the other would dart down with inconceivable swiftness,
and wheeling so as to come up beneath him, would drive him away
from his repast. He might fly to any other part of the room
unmolested, but an approach to the cup was the signal for an instant
assault. The ill-natured fellow himself drank long and frequent
draughts. I noticed that no sooner had this individual recovered his
boldness than he recovered his voice also, and both would screep
pertinaciously and shrilly, almost without intermission. When they
were accustomed to the room, their vivacity was extreme,
manifested in their upright posture, and quick turns and glances
when sitting, which caused their lovely breasts to flash out from
darkness into sudden lustrous light like rich gems;—and no less by
their dartings hither and thither, their most graceful wheelings and
evolutions in the air; so rapid that the eye was frequently baffled in
attempting to follow their motions. Suddenly we lose the radiant little
meteor in one corner, and as quickly hear the vibration of his
invisible wings in another behind us: or find him hovering in front of
our face, without having seen, in the least, how he came there. It is
worthy of observation that Polytmus in flying upward, keeps the
feathers of the tail closed, but in descending they are expanded to
the utmost, at which time the two long feathers, quivering with the
rapidity of their motion, like a streamer in a gale, form about a right
angle. I cannot tell why there should be this difference, but I believe
it is invariable.
From that time to the end of May, I obtained about twenty-five
more, nearly all males, and with one or two exceptions captured on
the Bluefields ridge. Some were taken with the net, others with bird-
lime; but though transferred to a basket or to a cage immediately on
capture, not a few were found dead on arrival at home. This sudden
death I could not at all account for: they did not beat themselves
against the sides, though they frequently clung to them: from the wild
look of several that were alive when arrived, sitting on the bottom of
the cage, looking upwards, I suspect terror, at their capture and
novel position, had no small influence. Many of those which were
found alive, were in a dying state, and of those which were turned

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The Radical Right: Biopsychosocial

Roots and International Variations 1st

International Populism: The Radical Right In The

International Business 3rd Edition Klaus Meyer

Media and Communications Policy Making: Processes,

The Right to Pain Relief and Other Deep Roots of the

New Voices and New Perspectives in International

China's Expansion in International Business: The

Peacebuilding and the Arts 1st ed. 2020 Edition Jolyon

The Radical Right: Report on the John Birch Society and

The Radical Right

ISBN 978-3-030-25130-7 ISBN 978-3-030-25131-4 (eBook)

A specter is haunting the world––the specter of the radical right. The

lead to converging theories and empirical results to explain these phe-

Munich, Germany Klaus Wahl

1 The Radical Right: More than a Topic of Political Science 1

2 Fear, Hate, and Hope: A Biopsychosociological Model of

2.3 Political Manifestations and Psychological Syndromes:

3 Psychological and Biological Factors: From Personality

4 Sociological and Historical Factors: From the Present

5 The Radical Right in Europe: Variations of a Socio-political

6 The Radical Right in Europe: Sociological and Historical

6.5 Interim Results: The Radical Right in Europe 270

7 Making America Great Again? The Radical Right in the

8 Bundling Insights, Expanding Horizons, and Offering

Klaus Wahl sociologist, conducted many interdisciplinary (biopsycho-

Heather Painter political scientist, worked at Washington & Jefferson

Fig. 1.1 The populist triangle (based on Berbuir et al., 2015) 7

1.1  n Interdisciplinary and International

Waves of nationalist sentiment are reshaping the politics of Western

© The Author(s) 2020 1

• First, in view of the terminological confusion in the field of political,

no simple reductionist explanation of “higher” by “deeper” factors is

1.2  roblems of Definition: It’s All Greek

1.2.1 Right and Left

p. 1135) “right-wing” means supporting a traditional hierarchical social

Another widely discussed phenomenon or ideology is (right-wing and

Political Elites Outsiders

Fig. 1.1 The populist triangle (based on Berbuir et al., 2015)

Populist right-wing parties are a widespread and not overtly violent

1.2.3 Radicalism and Extremism

Today, a common element of radical right programs is to establish social

wing parties and added emphasis on ethno-nationalism rooted in myths

1.2.4 Xenophobia and Racism

A key element of radical right patterns of emotions, thoughts, and ide-

1.2.6 Typologies and Working Definition

In order to avoid “quasi-Platonic” definitions like the “essence of Fascism”

more into details, Minkenberg (2011) differentiated four ideological types

• An autocratic-fascist right wing with racism, ethnocentrism, and an

• Right-wing populist parties distinguish “we, the people”, firstly, from a

anism, economic protectionism, and express skepticism about supra-

Of course, it is sometimes difficult to make a clear distinction between

1.3 The Spectrum of the Political Right

Conservatives and Violent and terrorist

Fig. 1.2 Spectrum of the political right

toral dynamics in times of changing welfare capitalism (pp. 171–196). Oxford:

2.1  asic Theoretical Assumptions:

© The Author(s) 2020 21

• First, the accusations often contain a grain of truth, or even more: in

Munich, Germany Klaus Wahl

1 The Radical Right: More than a Topic of Political Science 1

2 Fear, Hate, and Hope: A Biopsychosociological Model of

2.3 Political Manifestations and Psychological Syndromes:

3 Psychological and Biological Factors: From Personality

4 Sociological and Historical Factors: From the Present

5 The Radical Right in Europe: Variations of a Socio-political

6 The Radical Right in Europe: Sociological and Historical

6.5 Interim Results: The Radical Right in Europe 270

7 Making America Great Again? The Radical Right in the

8 Bundling Insights, Expanding Horizons, and Offering

Fig. 1.1 The populist triangle (based on Berbuir et al., 2015) 7

1.1 n Interdisciplinary and International

1.2 roblems of Definition: It’s All Greek

1.2.1 Right and Left

1.2.3 Radicalism and Extremism

1.2.4 Xenophobia and Racism

1.2.6 Typologies and Working Definition

1.3 The Spectrum of the Political Right

2.1 asic Theoretical Assumptions:

2.1.2 Politicization of Biopsychosocial Mechanisms