Journal Article
2024
Felipe G. Santos
Social Movement Studies
Spain's far-right party Vox has constructed an ecosystem of nominally independent civil society organizations to simulate grassroots support, advance culture-war agendas, and occupy spaces traditionally held by progressive actors. This article analyses the organisational strategies, funding networks, and discursive repertoires of these top-down organizations, showing how they mimic the forms of civil society while serving partisan political goals — a strategy the article terms 'astroturf counter-mobilisation'.
Why it matters: Documents a new right-wing playbook for undermining civil society from within — a strategy now being replicated across Europe and beyond.
Journal Article
2022
Felipe G. Santos and Dorit Geva
European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology
This article analyses how far-right and conservative groups in the European Parliament systematically disrupted deliberations on sexual health and reproductive rights through procedural obstruction, amendment flooding, and coordinated discursive strategies. Drawing on a dataset of parliamentary debates and voting records, it documents how anti-gender actors translated a broader cultural mobilisation into concrete legislative outcomes.
Why it matters: Shows how anti-democratic strategies operate at the supranational level — the European Parliament as a battlefield in the culture war against gender equality.
Journal Article
2021
Felipe G. Santos and Dorit Geva
International Affairs
Europe's far-right parties have created a network of training schools and ideological academies to form a new political elite and advance an alternative vision of international order — one premised on civilisational nationalism, opposition to liberal internationalism, and the defence of traditional values against 'globalist' institutions. This article analyses four such schools, their curricula, their funding, their transnational networks, and the vision of world order they promote.
Why it matters: Exposes the long-term intellectual infrastructure of the European far right — revealing that its challenge to liberal democracy is not just electoral but organisational and ideational.