benji sheppard /// @banjofromnowhere
Benji Sheppard, Design Academy Eindhoven 2026 graduate, multimedia designer and storyteller from St. Augustine, Florida, creates work influenced by experiences in the conservative South, religious deconstruction, and class division. He communicates complex experiences through various mediums, from steel to sound, adapting the approach to each project's unique demands.
The far-right, in its many forms has seen a significant global resurgence in the last decade. Since the end of World War II, there has been a slow rise in the popularity of extreme conservative beliefs in both Europe and in the US. Memories of the horrors of wartime fascist regimes have faded, and stigma for such beliefs has weakened. Christian Nationalism and its secular sister, the Populist Radical Right have now become significant political powers, representing a growing, volatile, and dangerous movement.
THE FAR RIGHT STOLE MY YOUTH
-> I think I was 13 when my parents took me and my 3 younger siblings to a Trump rally before his election in 2016. I remember waiting in a long line in the Florida heat to get inside, and my 8 and 10 year old brothers convincing my mom to buy a rubber Trump mask from the back of a man’s pickup truck because they just thought he was a funny guy. When I begged years later for her to take my sexuality into account when voting, my mother denied the danger that conservative politicians had been actively creating for people like me. She continued to go on about the breakdown of the nuclear family and the indoctrination of the youth in public schools being the reason why she chose to homeschool all of us. Fear of the left was the reasoning behind years upon years of isolation, fearmongering, and censorship. I left
home not long after and never looked back. My 3 siblings are still homeschooled.
THE FAR RIGHT STOLE MY PARENTS
-> After the 2007-2008 financial crisis, my parents joined the Christian church. I suppose they were already culturally
Christian, having been raised in traditional, conservative families, my father’s father being a cop, and my mother being from the deep american south. They were both quite successful in their late 20’s and early 30’s - middle class and starting a family, but after falling down the hierarchy, they became paranoid and resentful. They voted for more right wing pundits and pulled their children out of school to begin homeschooling them. Maybe if they hadn’t fallen down this pipeline, they still would have been bad parents, but it’s hard not to credit some strange butterfly effect for making them the strange, bitter, repressed, and angry people that they are today. The far right provides an extremely tempting outlet for desperate people like them to distribute blame.
THE FAR RIGHT STOLE MY COUNTRY
-> America has always been a country built on blood, but after the 2000’s slow but steady march towards tolerance, the exponential rise in hate, violence, and political turmoil in the last 10 years has been devastating, for me least of all compared to so many minority groups all over the globe. The farright is now just the right. Violent misogynists and racists frame themselves as patriots and believers in the sanctity of marriage. Homophobes and transphobes are innocent because they’re just practicing their religious freedom. The current silent recession in the American 2020’s has attempted to gaslight a whole generation of people into believing that they’re not working hard enough, when in reality, the cost of living has placed the vast majority of young people below the poverty line. The far-right killed my hope of a future in America, I can run, but the rest of the world isn’t safe either, they’re just less explicit about their issues.
THE FAR RIGHT STOLE MY FUTURE
-> Where is there left to go when the ground is sinking beneath you? The far-right’s infiltration of the political sphere has taken advantage of young people’s lack of trust in the democratic system to radicalize typical conservatives against minority groups and the youth. They sow fear and distrust by perpetuating the idea of the “illegal alien stealing your job” or the “radical marxist academic indocrinating your children”. Annually, for many of my teen years, I attended
a conservative Christian political camp intended to train high school aged children to become agents of the church
in politics through intense debate and public speech training from a young age. This is just one avenue through which far-right groups are attempting to oversaturate influential groups with reflections of their views. Some examples of
young, far-right politicians like Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, and Anna Paulina Luna have already wreaked havoc in
congress notably, through denial of the results of the 2020 presidential election..
WHAT IS THE FAR RIGHT?
MOST FAR RIGHT GROUPS HAVE DIRECT OR CULTURAL TIES TO RELIGION
-> Religions almost always intend to mainstain a status quo or to work towards the restoration of purity. Whether it be by ancient rulebooks, or modern authoritarian organizational structures, control is the priority of nearly all organized religious institutions. In the US specifically, most institutions have their hand on the political scale through wealthy donors, power within the community, or being the moral compass of represenatatives in positions of power. And so, it can be no surprise that the majority of far-right institutions and voters self-identify as being religious. Often, even if a politician is themselves not earnestly practicing a religion,; in the US, this is usually Christianity, they will still choose to represent themselves as Christian and standing for Christian principles.
THE FAR RIGHT HAS SLOWLY INCREASED IN RELEVANCE EVER SINCE THE END OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR
-> After the end of WW2, fascism in the west was nearly legislated out of existence. The horrors that had been enacted on such a large scale could never happen again. And so there was a cultural shift towards libertarianism. While not completely universal, this apprehension remained strong until memories of the war began to fade. Groups still loyal to Hitler’s ideals remained, but only on the distant outskirts. Those ideals morphed over time and became more palatable. While they were unable to choose for the nation, they were able to frame the debate around topics they deemed important. Media played a huge role in this. When a far-right group did something outrageous with an authoritarian cause at the center, the debate (and often the vote) became a yes/no question centered on a topic chosen by the far-right. A major reason for the success of this was certainly the quintessential far-right celebration of interpersonal hierarchy. The right has the wealthy on their side.
THERE IS MORE THAN ONE FAR RIGHT AND THEY ARE GENERALLY NOT ORGANIZED
-> When someone thinks of the Far-Right, they usually think of neo-Nazism or equivalent and explicitly fascist ideaologies.In reality, there are many sects that exist mostly on local levels. While the typical image of a violent rally does exist commonly, these groups are small and segregated when compared to the more mainstream populist right that appeals to the general working class by taking advantage of their fears and directing their anger towards the next target. The general idea, however, remains the same. As the values of mainstream parties have veered further right, they have united large swaths of these small sects.
THE FAR RIGHT IS AN EXPRESSION OF A NEED FOR CONTROL AND SECURITY
-> Conservatism, by definition, is inherently apprehensive towards change. Oftentimes, this does not simply mean that they themselves do not want to change, but also that they will work to halt change in the society around them. This explains the American focus on national security as a political talking point that seems to have existed since the dawn of time. More centrist conservatives often have the same concerns about the trajectory or their nation as extreme right figureheads, the distinction lies in the manner with which these issues are to be dealt with. This means, that under the correct circumstances, many average people could fall in line with the position of far-right advocates. We saw this with the election of Donald Trump in 2016, where the average conservative succombed to Trump’s fearmongering about immigration, China, and governmental corruption. Significance quest theory is one explanation for this sort of behavior. Similar to cults, extremist groups fulfil the human need for identity by giving them a label and a cause. It doesn’t hurt that security and family values are generally seen as a good look and a righteous cause.
THE ONLY RESPONSE TO THE FAR RIGHT IS ON A LOCAL SCALE. WE HAVE TO SPREAD INFORMATION TO COMMUNICATE THE DANGER OR SUCH A PERVASIVE PHILOSOPHY
-> So what can one do in the face of such a phenomenon? The fragmentation of these groups makes banning efforts like those seen in the 50’s and 60’s quite difficult nowadays, even if popular support of such causes weren’t part of the equation. Similar to responses to drug epidemics, picking off one strain doesn’t mean another can’t pop up in its place. That is why the answer to such a global issue has to begin on the small scale, with spreading of information between vulnerable people in your life who might have succombed to dangerous ideas. If your grandma is leaning a little too hard in the Trump direction, maybe talk to her about what in her life has informed her vote, what issues have affected her individually, and what issues might be able to be solved differently.
VIOLENCE PERPETRATED BY FAR RIGHT GROUPS IS DISPROPORTIONATELY HIGH WHEN COMPARED TO GROUPS WITH OTHER POLITICCAL AFFILIATIONS
-> While much is made of groups like Antifa within right wing circles, the violence perpetrated by fascist groups is largely ignored, not just by the common conservative, but also by government and law enforcement as a whole. It’s rare to even see acknowledgments of fascist violence or far-right rallies gone wrong, whereas eco-terrorists make front page regularly, despite their statistical rarity when compared to the ever-growing amount of right-wing violence globally. The far-right is fundamentally tied to violence; a fact that isn’t likely to change anytime soon. This can be seen in their unending allegiance to law enforcement and military efforts and their endorsement of mass incarceration and authoritarian approach to complex situations.
CONSERVATISM WILL NOT DIE WITH THE ELDERLY POLITICIANS CURRENTLY ENFORCING ITS AGENDA
-> While much of the blame for the current state of the world can be levied at the rich old men controlling the state of affairs globally, they will only continue to multiply into younger generations. The rise of the far-right we’ve seen in recent years is unexplainable without the support of younger people as well. Lately, we’ve seen movements like the manosphere and the alt-right consume many angry young people in the same way that right-wing conservatism took my own parents. Even though the platform of these groups is against the notion of change, they wouldn’t have survived this long if they had not evolved themselves. This will only continue. It will take different names, change slightly to remain palatable enough to be taken seriously, but the end goal will remain the same: old-testament conquest dressed up in a fancy package for the next generation. It promises them success through hard work, the same promise made to the very immigrants they persecute and legislate into poverty. While the left seeks to level the playing field, the right wants to keep it crooked, while remaining on the winning side. While it would be comforting to predict that the next generation of the right might be less dangerous than their predecessors, the brief glimpse that we’ve seen already would indicate the opposite.
Sources:
Mudde, Cas. *The Far Right Today*. Polity Press, 2020.
Obaidi, Milan. “What Are the Psychological
Characteristics of People Holding Far-Right Beliefs?” *C-REX - Center for Research on Extremism*
Johnson, Daryl. “Holy Hate: The Far Right’s Radicalization of Religion.” *Southern Poverty Law Center*
Barrón-López, Laura, and Sam Lane. “What Is Christian Nationalism and Why It Raises Concerns about Threats
to Democracy.” *PBS*, Public Broadcasting Service, 1 Feb. 2024
Barrón-López, Laura. “Concerns Grow over the Increasing Ties between Christianity and Right-Wing Nationalism.”
*PBS*, Public Broadcasting Service, 11 Oct. 2022,