Introducing Readers on Writers – the series where our shadow judging panel interview the shortlisted authors for the Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award.
In this interview, shadow judge Anastasia Charchalioti (@thebookorchestra) speaks to Harry Shukman about his shortlisted book Year of the Rat, published by Chatto & Windus / Vintage Books. Their conversation takes us through the reasoning of far-right groups and how to recognise their extremist beliefs.
1. How would you describe the process of going undercover?
Going undercover was the scariest thing I’ve ever done. I joined a far-right march in Warsaw, next to neo-Nazis setting off flares. I had to give a lift in my car to a man called “Nightmare”, who once stabbed a police officer in the throat. I sat down at a pub table of activists and was accused of being a “fed”. I was glad when it was over.
2. What non-fiction books would you recommend?
For Year of the Rat, I was inspired by Jon Ronson’s Them, Michael Schmidt’s The New Reich, and the essays of Joan Didion. Adam Rutherford’s books on race science are really engaging. Completely unrelated to this project, but I always like reading Lynn Barber’s collections of celeb interviews (and her autobiography, An Education).
3. Are there any authors that inspired you to write?
I love the books of Gitta Sereny (especially Into That Darkness). Her writing is so clear and manages to be so detailed without being becoming dry.
4. What was a revelatory experience during your year undercover?
I was most surprised by the discovery that an American tech entrepreneur called Andrew Conru, who created a sex and dating website called Adult Friend Finder, was the investor who gave $1.3 million to a company trying to push race science into the mainstream.
5. In your experience what is the leading cause that drives people to the far right?
There’s no one thing that leads people to the far right, and there are different theories that explain how people are radicalised. The one that makes the most sense to me, written by a University of Maryland academic called Arie Kruglanski, suggests that a key factor is the need to feel significant, the need to matter. If it is shaken by difficult life events, then someone might seek to reclaim their lost significance by doing something drastic, like joining a far-right group. A lot of the people I met while undercover told me about the wrong turns their lives had taken: the drudgery of a poorly paid or unfulfilling job, the loneliness of an inactive social or romantic life, the pain of a toxic family situation. There are loads of other reasons that might drive someone to be in the far right (and not everyone who has a difficult experience will sign up to Britain First the next day) but I was struck by how often this came up.
6. What do you define as the far right?
Cas Mudde, a political scientist at the University of Georgia, has a definition I like. He says it as an “anti-system” ideology. Far-right beliefs tend to encompass a mix of authoritarianism, sexism, xenophobia, racism and populism. Mudde splits “far right” into “radical right” and “extreme right”. Radical right politicians tend to believe in democracy, even if they oppose the rule of law or full rights for religious minorities or certain sexual orientations. Extreme right activists tend to reject democracy and are more likely to believe in violent action to achieve their goals. “Extreme right ideologies believe that inequalities are natural and outside of the purview of the state,” Mudde says. “They celebrate difference and hierarchy, and their core feature is elitism, which holds that some groups and individuals are superior to others and should therefore have more power.”
7. What would you say your book offers in the understanding of the British far right?
Ideas like the so-called “remigration” of minorities (a euphemism for ethnic cleansing) that I heard being discussed by far-right activists in secret conferences are now out in the open. If you’d like to read more about where these cruel ideas came from, and the kinds of people who want to make them reality, you might be interested in Year of the Rat.