Civilizational Fantasies in Populist Far Right and Islamist Discourses

Abstract

The article examines the affective potential of populist civilizational discourse. It reflects on two prevalent, opposing, civilizational identities to render visible their shared fantasmatic grounding. With reference to far right and Islamist configurations, the article aims to reveal the hidden and disguised elements of civilizational discourse that I contend give it affective power. Drawing on populist theory that centralizes antagonism in social identification, it examines the use of civilizational discourse in the performances of far right and Islamist parties, organizations, and individuals. I argue these civilizationist identities are defined by an obsession with a fantasmatic closure and homogeneity of social identities and civilization.

1. Introduction

Civilizational discourses are gaining more attention in the scholarship on different forms of essentialist politics (see for example, Morieson 2023; Yilmaz and Morieson 2022; Yilmaz and Morieson 2023). Because of their prevalence in shaping populist discourses around the world today, these are commonly studied in their connection with religion (see, for example, Gamage 2023; Saleem 2023; Shukri 2023 in this Special Issue) or as expressions of nationalism, often manifested in far right and right populist politics (see, for example, Brubaker 2017; Kaya and Tecmen 2019). Despite the current interest in civilizationist politics, their discursive constructions are nothing new. Throughout history, civilizationist politics has shaped the coming into being and the fragmentations of civilizations, and the religions, nations, and cultures that belong to them. Al-Andalus and the various caliphates and emirates that existed from the beginning of Islamization in the area is one such example of a sociocultural and political entity whose emergence (711 AD) and demise (1492 AD) is entangled with civilizationist discourses (Fierro 2008; Makki 1992). Although there is a risk of contributing to the essentialism that underlies civilizationist discourses when disregarding the nuances and complexities of the making and unmaking place, it is useful to look at the generalization of civilizationism to make sense of its appeal. Hence, the focus of this article is on the thinking that underlies civilizationist constructions that are prevalent in anti-democratic forms of modern politics. Complementary to studies that look at specific contents and manifestations of civilizationist discourses and politics, respectively, the aim of the article is to connect two opposing ideological configurations. These ideologies run in opposite directions in terms of their ideational content; they share similar fantasies, grounded in civilizationist mythologies. Focusing on these shared fundaments is important because it reveals how civilizationist discourses are sustained and strengthened from multiple, and ideationally opposing, angles. On the other hand, using a definition of populism that is consistent with such a relational approach, it shows how alliances between different socioeconomic, cultural, political, and ethical interests are created alongside a negative identification with the bearers of power (see, for instance, Laclau 2005; Mouffe 2011; Stavrakakis 2017) who undermine “civilization”.

Analyzing the dialectical relationship between opposing ideologies and their civilizationist underpinnings is facilitated through the application of a theoretical approach that considers identity formation to be the result of relations of difference (Torfing 1999). For that reason, I employ a discourse-theoretical approach to the study of populism and hegemonic formations (see, for instance, Palonen and Sundell 2019; Marchart 2018; Marttila 2015). Key scholars in this field rely on a theoretical genealogy that finds roots in Hegelian, Marxist, and Gramscian thought, albeit with variation. Because it is not within the scope of the article to elaborate on these theoretical underpinnings, it suffices to make clear three points that distinguish their approach from other, more dominant, theories in the scholarship of populism. First, society is constituted by antagonism, which makes it political, and antagonism cannot be overcome (Marchart 2018; Torfing 1999). Laclau (1986), one of the protagonists of the hegemonic approach to populism, famously said “society is impossible” because overcoming difference would mean the end of politics and therefore the end of society as a differential constitution. In other words, antagonism is always present, waiting to be “activated” (Marchart 2018). Thus, research does not begin with the premise that antagonism is a hindrance; rather, antagonism is inevitable and what should be understood is why and how it can be constructed in ways that are socially emancipatory instead of socially and politically exclusionary. Indeed, there is always a frontier that is being constructed in populist discourse; however, that frontier does not have to be exclusionary.

Second, affectivity is central to all forms of politics, yet recent scholarship suggests it is more pronounced in populist forms of articulation (Vulović and Palonen 2023). The reason for this is because the intent of populism is to mobilize different political demands, both existing and emerging, around a universality. That universality is the antagonism, or what is often referred to as “the elite,” in mainstream populist scholarship (Canovan 2002; Mudde 2004; Rooduijn and Akkerman 2017; Wodak et al. 2013). Singular discontents are subsumed by the universality for the sole purpose of creating an alliance between people and their subject positions in opposition to a common threat. When these linkages are constructed successfully, each singular demand is consolidated into one affective force. Even, or especially, when these singular demands are in conflict with each other, the affective force can be sustained. This is why seeking a rational narrative in populist discourses can be a futile endeavor. The negative object toward which the affective force is directed (e.g., the political establishment, the Muslim, LGBTQI+ identities) is embedded within a multitude of demands, all of which contain in isolation a set of relations that are linked to specific affects (such as fantasies, desires, discontents). These affects consist of emotions that are used to mobilize people toward a new hegemonic project (e.g., the establishment of a caliphate or the disintegration of democratic institutions).

The notion of affect leads to the third point. Political identities are contingent, meaning they are not fixed or complete, even when they appear to be. Essentialist forms of populism construct their discourses based on an ideal of their identities being whole and complete, and fixed in time. As such, they can consider themselves a panacea to an ever-changing world. They present a fixity of time and space encapsulated by the core identifiers of culture and religion. What occupies the void that makes contingency possible is the social threat that, through its difference, is the obstruction to attaining wholeness, or what can also be understood as timelessness. For example, in the case of the far right, secular democracies are dissolving because of the presence of the Muslim Other who is perceived as incommensurable with the cultural and ethical foundations of society. These cultural and ethical foundations are the underpinnings of civilization, according to the far right. As Stavrakakis (2007) argues, fantasy operates to hide the contingent essence that marks society (de Barros 2020). Despite going in different directions in their theorization of political fantasies, Žižek (2019) likewise contends fantasy is the disguising mechanism that makes political ideologies truly ideological. In other words, ideologies operate as ideologies precisely when they are not conceived as ideological by those who practice them (Žižek 2019). Within the fantasmatic structure of discourse, the Other is replaced as an object of desire. There is a fixation on the Other that transforms the it into an object of desire (Lacan 1966).

With these three theoretical points as the backdrop of our investigation, here, civilizational discourses present “fantasmatic promises” (de Barros 2020, p. 518) that can never be attained. These cannot be attained because there is always an openness that marks the contingent nature of society and politics; without that openness, there is no contingency, and without contingency, no difference, and change is possible. Fantasies function to disguise that contingency. Coping with the constitutive lack of society is mitigated by an obsession about an “idealized object” (de Barros 2020, p. 519). That object, embodied in a subjective Other, is the object of desire, because it reflects a longing to resolve the lack of closure (Vulović and Palonen 2023). Mobilizing people around an object of desire is especially pertinent in populist discourse. Following the recent contributions of de Barros (2020, p. 518), the difference between democratic and anti-democratic modes depends on the obsession of the fantasmatic Other and the aptness by which one “traverses fantasy”.

It is for the very reason by which essentialist modes of populism are traversing fantasy, far right and Islamist configurations are chosen to be studied in conjunction. There are various studies that investigate the mutual relationship between modern far right and Islamist politics (see, for example, Abbas 2019; Ebner 2017; Lygren and Ravndal 2021). However, to my knowledge, there are no studies that examine their relationship through the notion of fantasies of civilizationism. I define far right and Islamism loosely, acknowledging that their ideologies and manifestations are manifold and contingent on space and time, by looking at their populist variants. Neither far right nor Islamist politics are populist in essence; however, current manifestations tend to employ a populist logic to construct their identities. Hence, this article is limited to cases of the far right and Islamism that use a populist logic to construct a discourse of civilization that is antagonistic and essentialist in essence. With the aim to unpack the shared fantasies that underlie their civilizational discourses, the article draws on theories of populism that centralize the notion of fantasy. As such, the article intends to answer how far right and Islamist discourses incorporate a shared civilizational dimension to construct a populist frontier.

2. Methods

For this article, I abstracted the civilizationist dimension from one far right and one Islamist political discourse, both of which employ a populist logic to construct their discourse. The case subjects were selected on the basis of their populist configurations, their relative coherence in discourse, and their shared reliance on the Muslim as a distinguishable social Other. Because civilizational discourses are by their very content transnational, I chose not to delimit the data to one geographical location. Instead, the case subjects are reflective of a globalized discourse in their content, their situation, and their reach. Although far right organizations, movements, and political parties are often studied from within their national context, the civilizational dimension allows discerning their transnational intent, character, and reach. Islamist parties, organizations, and movements, on the contrary, are often researched from a transnational perspective, linking them to foreign governments, ideologies (such as Wahhabism), and other contextual interventions, such as the social realities of Muslims in places such as China, Myanmar, and Palestine. Focusing on populist configurations of far right and Islamist discourses demonstrates the commonalities in their use of civilizationism to create a social and political frontier. From another lens argued elsewhere (see for example, de Groot Heupner 2022; de Groot Heupner and Rane 2022), that intersecting point of civilizationism is occupied by the idea of a Muslim subject that is incommensurable with liberal, pluralist, and democratic convictions. In other words, both discourses invest in a Muslim Other in similar ways to create a culturally disparate society, or as it is more commonly understood, a polarized society.

For its empirical evidence, the study was limited to data collected from within the context of advanced democracies. Islamist discourse is analyzed in how it presents itself in Western democracies, and thus, arguably, outside its dominant sphere of influence. Notwithstanding the limitations of such a spatial delineation, it offers a starting point for further studies on the contextual specificities of far right and Islamist relations as they play out in different political and cultural settings. I drew on earlier research conducted on the Netherlands, with an extension to the application of civilizational discourses in other democracies. Preceding research that examined the civilizational discourses of the Dutch populist far right Party for Freedom and the Dutch branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a transnational Islamist organization that I consider to be populist in orientation, is the basis for examining the extension of their discourse. The Party for Freedom and its controversial founder and leader Geert Wilders can be considered a vanguard for the harsh, blunt, and vulgar discourse of Islam, or what is rather a discourse of Islamism in its consideration of Islam as ideological and political in essence. Pauline Hanson, the Australian variation of Wilders, for example, has adopted Wilders’ rhetoric and provocative style. Donald Trump can be considered another case of outright vulgarity that has no shame in vilifying entire populations and their beliefs. Although some observers would argue the reverse, that politicians like Hanson influenced Wilders (see, for example, Daisley 2017), Wilders was one of the first liberal democratic politicians to be successful in creating an ideational alliance that moved a vulgar discourse from the peripheries to the center. Despite moderate to no accomplishments in terms of forming a coalition government, the Party for Freedom’s opposition has been stable for almost two decades. Being established as a single member party, Wilders and the Party for Freedom can be considered one and the same. Otherwise put, Wilders is himself the fantasmatic promise of what the party represents, which is a society without Islam. Textual and contextual data were gathered from ideological materials, such as manifestos, official statements, and political debates, and ideological performances, and analyzed in accordance with discourse-theoretical premises that recognize the central position of affect. Using codes to identify the different relations that exist between the elements that make up each discourse, the methodological approach can capture the distinction between horizontal relations—the social outsider—and vertical relations—the hegemonic opponent. In turn, what becomes visible is the nuance between opposition and antagonism, and how the investment in a Muslim Other helps to foment a populist movement against the hegemonic order.

The reasons for selecting the Party for Freedom are clear; they have been electorally successful in Dutch politics and their antagonistic discourse toward Islam is evident in a multitude of far right parties that occupy leading positions in Europe, and beyond. There is more reluctance to accept Hizb ut-Tahrir as a valid case subject, apparent in the relative lack of scholarship on the organization, and the general consensus that the organization is hardly influential in seeking support for their Islamist discourse. However, I posit that Hizb ut-Tahrir is a justifiable case subject precisely because it operates on the peripheries and rejects participation in dominant forms of politics. The citizen, according to Hizb ut-Tahrir, is neither national, cultural, nor democratic, but first and foremost ideological. It is for that reason Hizb ut-Tahrir denies political aims and methods that are directed toward national governance. The more influential Muslim Brotherhood, for instance, has historically mobilized people in opposition to local governance and in specific periods has done so through participating in legislative elections. This, according to Hizb ut-Tahrir, is not a sound method to revive the ummah1—the Muslim community—and Islamic civilization.

Most of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s ideological material stems back to the genesis of the organization in Jerusalem in 1953 by jurist and Palestinian Islamic court judge Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani (1909–1977). Hizb ut-Tahrir, in the words of subsequent leader Abdul Qadeem Zallum (1977–2003), is the true antidote to hegemonic rule:

Since the Kufr has been sitting on the Muslims chests and since their affairs fell into the hands of the Kuffar, the hypocrites and the apostates, they have not ceased to attempt to break free from the noose of the Kufr authority and the hegemony of its masters and agents.

(Zallum 2000, p. 203)

Their main demand, an Islamic State or Khilafah, through the unification of the ummah, is a force to oppose and destroy the kufr systems by which Muslims, and the goodness of humankind, are enslaved.

Textual data were gathered from original ideological material written by Al-Nabhani2 and Wilders, and the more recent translated and/or original English and/or Dutch publications and speeches that represent both parties. This included media statements from local Hizb ut-Tahrir and Party for Freedom representatives. Contextual data were gathered from Dutch media statements, in-depth interviews with the local branch and political representatives, online Dutch seminars, parliamentary proceedings, and discursive performances, such as the Muhammed cartoon contest organized on multiple occasions by the Party for Freedom.

In terms of the application and extension of discourse in and to other democratic contexts, the article includes textual and performative data from individuals whose actions have had a significant impact on the dissemination and (de)-legitimization of civilizational discourses. These actors include Anders Behring Breivik, Brenton Harrison Tarrant, and Payton Gendron, who carried out terrorist attacks in Norway in 2011, New Zealand in 2019, and United States in 2022, respectively. All three attacks were obsessive, or fantasmatic, examples of the “lived practice” of civilizational discourses in the way they were wholly absorbed and became the reason for radical action. While there are more examples, these three cases are relevant in the successive reproduction of discourse; Gendron reiterates Tarrant, and Tarrant relies on Breivik. While I acknowledge the ethical concerns around researching their actions and highlighting their names, because that only strengthens their intent and objectives, I am of the opinion that the potential value of examining the fantasmatic appeal of civilizational discourses outweighs the potential risk. After all, it is not their discourse that is being reproduced here in a descriptive sense, which researchers argue to be the greatest risk, because the purpose is to recreate their discourse by revealing the fantasmatic, and epistemological, foundations that are not unique to their ideological position.

Following the argument that Islamists and the far right are “two sides of the same coin” (Abbas 2017, p. 60), the methodological intent was to demonstrate where and how they intersect. Arguing that Islamists and the far right are one and the same in terms of intent, objectives, and outcomes does risk falling into a practice of essentializing ourselves. Rather, using these categories of far right and Islamism as heuristics mitigates the potential of essentializing their discourse, which, as should be emphasized, is performative and thus not limited to linguistic structure. Essentializing their identities has implications for whether and how researchers are able to discern their internal contradictions and thereby their potential to construct and mobilize subjective alliances. Hence, the discourse was analyzed according to the theoretical premises that were laid out by discourse theorists that privilege an affective, unconscious dimension to discourse and populism. By thinking in and thinking through difference, the meaning contents, or signifiers, that constitute civilizational discourse were studied in their relation to each other, and the opposing civilizational discourse. This was done through investigating how these constitutive elements and relations expand the discourse, which is the main goal to reach a hegemonic status (Torfing 1999, p. 110). Thus, the methodical aim was to seek the differences and relations by which civilizational discourse is becoming hegemonic in the practice of far right and Islamist politics.

A final word must be noted on the intersection with populism. Why abstract the populist dimension from far right and Islamist discourse? To what extent can they be conceived as populist? Is it not more accurate to name them by their ideational content, instead of their style and logic (i.e., far right and Islamist)? There are several reasons why I named these discourses populist. For one, their civilizational discourses are clearly dividing the social space into two universal camps, for which they employ a fantasmatic logic to make that possible (Glynos 2008, 2021). While these two conditions are not reserved for populism, fascist discourse relies on the same two conditions, for example. However, a populist logic relies on a democratic potential. In other words, democratic principles and realities do not have to be dissolved for populism to succeed; they can exist hand in hand. Moreover, rather than focusing on populism as the phenomenon that marks civilizational politics, the concept was used to examine its role in defining civilizational politics (de Cleen and Glynos 2021). Following the recommendation from de Cleen and Glynos (2021), taking a more nuanced approach decentralized populism from the “phenomenon” without losing sight of its significance in constructing a sociopolitical division (de Cleen and Glynos 2021). Lastly, naming them populist shed attention on the functioning of constructing a populist frontier, what Glynos and Howarth (2007) called the logic of populism (de Cleen et al. 2018; de Cleen and Glynos 2021; Glynos and Mondon 2016), which can get lost when we focus mainly or entirely on the ideational content.

3. Results

Civilizational discourse in the far right discourse materials studied here can be understood through the paradoxes within the central signifiers that constitute the discourse. Borrowing from Žižek’s (2019) contributions, notions of freedom, tolerance, fairness, and enlightenment, contain paradoxes that arguably make them successful. From Wilders’ discourse, but also present in the Belgian Vlaams Belang, for example, the paradox of tolerance is an explicit demand. The almost religious attachment to tolerance in the politics of the leftist mainstream is in direct conflict with the intolerance engrained in Muslim religiosity. It is, after all, because of the attachment to tolerance that the immediate threat to tolerance in the intolerance of the Muslim Other has been overlooked. Hence, the argument has been made that the leftist mainstream, whether in politics, media, or academia, is blinded by their “religious” obsession with their own ideological standpoints. Tolerance is an ultimate good, even at the cost of tolerance itself, so the argument goes. However, the real paradox of tolerance is in the tolerance that is being protected. Liberal tolerance, from the position of the far right, is what Žižek (2019) explained in his conception of “Zionist antisemitism”—a hostile attitude toward the Jews that is being obscured by defending the existence of a Jewish state (i.e., the state of Israel as Jewish state). From that perspective, Wilders’ alliance with Israel is possible because Jews do not impose themselves on the secular European and Western states. In Žižek’s (2019) explanation, Jews can exist as long as they do not come too close; hence, the rationale for a Jewish state elsewhere. The same double position does not apply to the Muslim figure, however. Islam poses an existential threat to Western—Judeo-Christian—civilization, and the displacement of the Muslim Other would only strengthen the geopolitical position of Islamic civilization. Such an argument contains certain ontological assumptions about civilization, Islam, and politics, which I shall turn to later.

Especially in combination with more recent far right discourse that appeals to an “intellectual” audience, the signifier “freedom” has been consolidated around different demands, desires, and subject positions (or interests). Whereas freedom in the aftermath of 9/11 was formulated around the negation of “Islamic” civilization, that direct negation is no longer evident in more recent far right discourse. Rather than being a different kind of discourse, although a linguistic examination would conclude as such, it can be deemed an extension of discourse. Whereas in the discourse of Wilders there is an overdetermination of the Muslim, more recent forms do not need to absorb that antagonistic relation because it has been sedimented already. Although the Muslim Other might be absent from the discourse in explicit terms, it is not absent from its structure in the sense it still occupies a central position in the formation of the antagonistic frontier with the hegemonic order. Freedom, or the loss of freedom, is in direct relation, or negation, with the “ideological mind” that occupies the public and political institutions. That “ideological mind” is blinded to the implications of its ideological blind spots regarding the cultural, or rather, civilizational, defining features that have shaped modern democracies. The absence of the Muslim Other “sophisticated” the discourse because it transcends the “simple” opposition and instead focuses on the epistemological falsehood that defines the current hegemonic order. That epistemological falsehood is what connects and divides Western civilization from other, namely, Islamic civilization.

In such a construction, with or without the central figure of the Muslim, what can be observed is a metaphoric relation between “civilization” and “Civilization”, and “Islamic” and “Islamist”. In the manifestos of Breivik, Tarrant, and Gendron, such universal representation is evident in the use of the clash paradigm. That is, “civilization” as a signifier and concept is used to construct a metaphor within the term itself where “civilization” comes to mean “the rightful civilization”. Hence, the phrase “the end of civilization” is effective because it constructs a linkage between the losses, the lack, and the desires that are framed around the “false consciousness” that occupies the “ideological mind”. Rather than directing attention to the economic structures that lead to inequalities, for example, the “end of civilization” configuration accounts for the multitude of social issues. Climate change, for instance, can then become the outcome of the ideological falsehood that is, in the case of Hizb ut-Tahrir, the cause of climate change, and in the case of the far right, the cause of climate change mitigation. In either case, the “people” are deprived, and “civilization” is taking itself further toward its demise.

In the book, The System of Islam, Al-Nabhani (2002) advocated a radical change of current modes of thought (fikr). In the words of Al-Nabhani (2002, p. 5), the reason for a radical transformation is because it is “thought (fikr) that generates the concepts about things and consolidates them”. Seeing it is the system of (human) concepts (mafaaheem) that allows people to make sense of the world, radical change is inextricably linked to the transfiguration from (human) concepts (mafaaheem) to divine thought (fikr). Therefore, the ultimate task of Hizb ut-Tahrir is to radically transform the intellectual basis upon which the “ummah” construct their understanding of the world. The transformation from a false consciousness to enlightened thought (al-fikr al-mustaneer) demands a commitment to the Qur’ān as the will of Allah. Considering the limited cognitive capability of humankind, a social and political system derived from the intellect of mortal human beings is ultimately “liable to disparity, differences and contradiction” (Al-Nabhani 2002, p. 13). The inequality and injustice that mark the world today are evidence of the limited ability of humankind to govern the natural and human world.

Both the far right studied here and Hizb ut-Tahrir oppose a distinction between “Islamic” and “Islamist”. Their civilizational discourse is reliant on the metaphoric relation between Islamic and Islamist, with the latter collapsing into the former. Islamic, as a religion and civilization, is inherently political because it encompasses every aspect of social life. Thus, the distinction between Islamic and Islamism is the future because the latter is the political manifestation of something that is already ideologically, and therefore, political. In the political operation of metaphorization, Islamism is replaced with Islamic, which functions to connect ideological fantasies and politics to civilization. Were Hizb ut-Tahrir a self-proclaimed Islamist organization, it would be one of the many political actors that aim to Islamize the political space. Rather, Hizb ut-Tahrir is an Islamic organization because what it aims to do is lift the veil of modern Muslim consciousness to let Muslims see their true relationship with their religion and God. As such, the metaphor “Islamic” functions to draw a linkage between consciousness, false consciousness, and civilization, because it is a demand for the revival of a lost Islamic consciousness that can only exist and thrive under Islamic law. In the same vein, the increase in Muslim migration to, and dispersion in, the West, has consolidated a civilizational imagination that relies on a fantasmatic “fort of Europe”. Al-Andalus, Italy, and Hungary are examples that symbolize the boundaries of the fortress in their historic “battle for Europe”. It is therefore no surprise these places are again in the forefront of the metaphoric mind—that which is visualized—when thinking about the influx of refugees since 2014 onward. These events, accompanied by images of refugees in boats and on foot that have become so familiar to now have a function of their own through their cliché (not unlike the famine-stricken African child of the 1980s who still has a similar effect), activated a fantasmatic dimension that has been dormant but has never left the social imagination. This is the dimension that also placed the public behind the Nazi discourse, even when the idea of the Jew as the ultimate Other was not explicit in articulation. Rather, as I posit, it is the metaphoric conception of civilization in relation to other essentialist conceptions of civilization, such as Islamization without its complex, entangled, and disparate histories, that is activating fantasmatic elements of oneness and sameness.

Civilizational discourses that are populist in logic utilize oneness as sameness. Wilders often insinuates that he respects and advocates social differences, but that difference can never impede oneness. While that is not a radical statement in itself, since a degree of oneness is imperative for every social constitution, what Wilders promotes is a oneness through sameness. Whereas a populism that encourages democratic openness relies on a oneness through difference, Wilders’ position is one of closure. That is not the same as arguing his position is one of sameness, because that would conflict with the social variance the discourse does allow. For example, it allows for a diverse set of cultural, sexual, ethnic, and racial positions, even though interests related to these positions are in conflict with the civilizational premises (of whiteness, for instance). Sameness is first and foremost cultural, but it would be too specific to argue it is cultural in a national sense. Although it appears that far right discourse is first and foremost nationalist, the “America First” slogan is an example that demonstrates a broader alliance formed with the intent of its reproduction. What started as “America First”, I contend, was intended to be reproduced around the world to become “Netherlands First”, “Australia First”, and so on. These slogans tend to lead to arguments such as the return to the central position of the nation–state; however, I argue they are indicative of a civilizational fantasy that connects, rather than separates, the specific nations and cultures.

The logic of connection through separation is not so different in the discourse of Hizb ut-Tahrir. Current leader, jurist, and scholar Abu Yaseen Ata ibn Khaleel Abul Rashtah claims the organization the largest Islamic political party operating under a single leadership and single demand globally (Hizb ut-Tahrir 2012). On the basis of its clear three-stage method of culturation, interaction, and implementation, respectively, Hizb ut-Tahrir distinguishes itself from other parties with a global populist outlook, similar to the Muslim Brotherhood. On the grounds of the first and second stages, achieving the culturation of a Muslim consciousness among party members (1) and the ummah (2), Hizb ut-Tahrir rejects participation in ontic politics as that would intervene with and distract from the objective to revive a consciousness that is unshackled from its corruptors (for more thorough discussion on Hizb ut-Tahrir, see, for example Sinclair 2010; Taji-Farouki 1994, 1996, 2014). Politics, even in an Islamic state such as Iran, is not aligned with the intellectual struggle, or da’wa, that is imperative first and foremost across the entire ummah, and not confined to nation–states, which remain shackled to corrupted ideas and ideologies. However, the explicit separation from other organizations, movements, parties, and states does not serve to separate the discourse of Hizb ut-Tahrir from alternative globalized Islamist discourses. Rather, through its distinction, it is able to extend the discourse and strengthen the antagonistic frontier with the West it ultimately depends on for its success.

Borrowing from Akkerman (2005, pp. 342–43), what is articulated is a “nostalgia for a mythical world of homogeneity”. Civilization is a metaphor for that nostalgia for a homogeneity that never existed but is activated in the social imagination as a historical fact and thereby a nostalgic possibility. Nostalgia is therefore both an affective experience of an imagined past and a projection of that imagination onto the future. In the next section, we will discuss further the mythical and fantasmatic foundation of civilizational discourse with respect to both ideological positions.

4. Discussion

What we have observed so far is a configuration of discourse that is centered around civilizationism. What is furthermore important is to render visible the fantasmatic dimension of civilizational discourse that keeps intact the clash regime because the content itself is not what makes it so powerful. There are reasons other than the “simple” discontents and demands that mobilize people around a discourse whose contents are mythological in essence. We can start exploring the fantasmatic dimension with the words of Al-Nabhani (2002, p. 35) who wrote, and I paraphrase, the “only correct bond” is the ideological bond from which the rational doctrine [of Islam] emanates. Conversely, a religious or spiritual bond is a “partial and impractical bond” because it reflects an individual experience and is therefore unsuitable for instituting a popular will (Al-Nabhani 2002, p. 35). Therefore, the “Hizbi” culture, or ideological bond, is the intellectual basis for their fikra (thought) and tariqa (method). The same applies to the far right that considers the ideological bond the strongest. Although disguised as a patriotic bond, it is not a specific place that bonds people, but the ideological frame that defines that place. Even though that ideological frame does not have to be fixed and can change with the place, in the instance of civilizational populist discourses these are fixed. The social bond is thus an ideological bond.

Being an ideological bond, the social connection is limited to a specific fantasmatic utopian idea. There are ideological bonds that do not have a utopian element attached to them, or at least where it is minimal, but in civilizational discourses, the utopian dimension is strong. That utopia does not need to have a formal shape or form, as it does in the case of the Khilafah of Hizb ut-Tahrir. It can be directed to an undecided place, and what makes it utopian is that the notion of civilization is stripped bare of social and historical realities that are complex and nuanced. In other words, it absorbs a utopian vision of the past and the future, one that does not even have to be aligned. Hizb ut-Tahrir’s strategic outlook for implementing the Islamic state is based on the Prophet Muhammad’s time in Medina; however, it is aligned with a specific reading of the Prophet’s method and intention. Thus, the utopian imagination of how the Prophet Muhammad established a collective religious bond is misconceived in the minds of Hizb ut-Tahrir and the far right in having the intent to establish an ideological, and therefore political, bond. This contains a specific fantasy and desire regarding what a social bond is—whether it is fixed in time and space, or contingent, open, and flexible. Epistemologically, its relationship to knowledge differs in whether it is something that is fixed or flexible.

These fantasies around a fixed utopia are strengthened by an epistemological outlook that substitutes reality for fantasy. In the case of the far right, this substitution is clear in their engagement with the COVID-19 pandemic, linking it to notions of falsehood that are not unlike the falsehood linked to the Muslim Other. Hence, rather than linking the untruth of the COVID-19 pandemic to another kind of far right discourse, it is an extension of the existing far right discourse, seeing it is grounded in the same fantasy. From the surface the anti-COVID position seems “anti-scientific”, but from a fantasmatic point of view it is embedded in a “scientific” mind. In fact, it is a “scientific” instead of an “anti-scientific” position because antagonism is constructed around the obsession with “rationality”. The “scientific” mainstream position, or consensus, around COVID-19 is evidence of modern-day hysteria, the same hysteria that is obsessed with the emancipation of the “refugee”, the “migrant”, and the “poor and oppressed” in foreign countries. True science, as the far right argument goes, is employing a rational position that will inevitably lead to discerning the epistemological errors in hegemonic thought. The same logic is evident in Hizb ut-Tahrir, albeit around the signifier of Islam. In other words, where the far right relies on the fantasy of European thought (e.g., the Enlightenment, Renaissance, Greek philosophers) as being the bearer of rationality that underpins modern civilization, the fantasy of Hizb ut-Tahrir is dependent on the genesis of Islamic thought and civilization (note: not its religion).

What does revealing the fantasmatic dimension of civilizational discourses mean for the understanding of their diverse manifestations? When we do not see populist phenomena in their relationship to other polarizing manifestations, we can become inclined to reduce them to their ideational contents. In turn, we focus on that which is linguistically articulated, which in the case of civilizational populism will have it reduced to religion and culture. I argue that even though these defining features matter, they are not what gives civilizational discourse its affective force. Rather, drawing on populist theory that gives ontological privilege to the fantasmatic, civilizational identities activate a fantasy in which the “end of civilization” is fetishized. In the utopian imagination, the end point of civilization has been reached; however, such a vision is reserved for a few. Hence, it is the task of the intellectual vanguard to liberate the masses from their false consciousness and mobilize collective action against the hegemonic order. The article has attempted to demonstrate that a relational and populist vantage point leads to a distinct conclusion about the functioning of civilizational discourse to construct a counter-hegemonic force. By looking at the intersection of Islamist and far right variations of civilizational discourse, I hope the article has made clear that civilizational discourse is being reinforced from different, opposing, directions. Employing populist methods of substitution (the operation of metaphor), the article provided examples of the extension of discourse. This extension underlies the process of hegemonization, or in other words, operates to instill a collective imagination that has the potential to become a counter-hegemonic force. Further research would benefit from more in-depth engagement with empirical case studies across spatial contexts to better understand the functioning and hegemonic potential of civilizational discourse and identities.