Shaping illiberal citizenries: Far-right justifications of educational structures

Educational structures do not only have pedagogical implications; by defining and ranking categories of teaching and learning, and by assigning individuals to these categories, they also contribute to shaping the identity and stratification of citizenries. It is this latter dimension that is often mobilised in the political debate on structures. Existing literature in sociology and politics shows that the main parties in post-World War II Europe have typically invoked liberal citizenship norms based on solidarity, autonomy and pluralism in this debate to appeal to both domestic electorates and international audiences. But what about those who disagree with liberal and egalitarian understandings of citizenship? This paper examines one such movement: the post-1945 Western European far right. Applying rigorous content analysis to an extensive original database of archival documents, we show that extreme and radical right parties and intellectual organisations largely advocate highly stratified education systems and justify this preference with social-order based citizenship norms - but we also find rhetorical variation. While existing theories of liberal-democratic education politics can serve to understand some of this variation, more specific theorising may be needed for educational research to develop a finer-grained understanding of the rhetorical and positional choices of actors who reject liberal-democratic principles.