Where the far-right is not: critical terrorism studies and the epistemological limits of far-right extremism in non-Western contexts

This article questions how critical terrorism studies (CTS) understands, identifies, and delimits the far-right, by examining vernacular ethnonationalist discourse in Nigeria. Responding to recent CTS interventions to problematise “far-right extremism” as constructed categories rather than self-evident objects, the article advances an epistemological critique of how far-right extremism (FRE) is known within the field. Drawing on an analysis of 300 X (Twitter) posts, it examines how territorial nativism, autochthony claims, historical grievance, divine nationalism, economic ethnonationalism, and imaginaries of annihilation circulate as everyday socio-political discourses. While these discourses resonate strongly with analytical markers commonly associated with FRE and far-right logic broadly, they do so in the absence of recognised far-right organisations, formal mobilisation, and spectacular violent events— all indicators that animate theoretical understanding of far right. I argue that these depicts a deeper limitation within CTS itself. That is, frameworks developed in Western contexts, where FRE is made visible, travel poorly to postcolonial settings where exclusionary nationalist logics are embedded within the society and circulate as everyday conditions and not as exceptional threats. The Nigerian case shows how CTS, even in its criticality, remains attached to FRE Western-centric expectations of visibility and eventfulness, reproducing the epistemic assumptions it seeks to unsettle.