What does it mean to be far-right?
The term dates back to the origins of the left-right political divide in the late 18th century, when one of Europe’s most powerful kingdoms underwent a period of profound political upheaval.
During the French Revolution, a literal divide emerged in the National Assembly, the country’s parliament. Defenders of the monarchy and the old order sat to the right, while revolutionary advocates of republicanism, secularism and equality occupied seats to the left.
From that seating plan grew the political language we still use today.
By the late 19th century, the left-right divide born in revolutionary France had become part of Europe’s political vocabulary.
German Reichstag records from the period already referred to deputies on the left (links) and right (rechts), while Italian newspapers used sinistra and destra as routine political labels.
The term extreme droite, in turn, came to be used as a label for the ultra-royalists, or hardline monarchists who rejected the Republic and sought a return to strong monarchical authority. Their stance sat well beyond traditional conservatives, who emphasised preserving existing institutions, gradual reform and participation in constitutional politics.
By the late 19th century, European newspapers and political commentators were already using “far right” to describe anti-republican and nationalist movements, even though the label had not yet acquired a fixed meaning. Over time, it came to describe movements that rejected liberal democracy and embraced nationalism – the belief that the nation, often defined in ethnic or cultural terms, should take precedence over pluralism and individual rights.
In the 1920s and 30s, fascism gave the term “far right” a more modern ideological shape and used populist messaging to gain power. Movements like Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party in Italy and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party in Germany embodied the traits that would define the far right for decades. This involved rejecting liberal democracy and communism, hostility to pluralism, and the rise of ultranationalism, which placed the nation’s interests above all else. Anti-Semitism, of course, was core to Nazi ideology.
After World War II, the political mood shifted across Europe.
The liberation of the concentration camps, revelations about the Holocaust, and the collapse of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy left the continent confronting the consequences of racial hatred and authoritarian rule. Fascist parties were banned, dissolved or pushed out of government and public life, but the ideas themselves did not vanish.
In some places, they survived through authoritarian nationalist regimes, most notably Francisco Franco’s Spain, where a tightly controlled one-party state blended Catholic traditionalism, militarism and fierce anti-communism until the 1970s.
Elsewhere, they re-emerged in new forms, such as Le Pen’s FN, a renewed strain of nationalism, combined with anti-immigrant sentiment, rather than the overt fascism of the interwar years.
Today, political scientists largely use “far right” as an umbrella term and rely on the three main criteria as laid out by Mudde, author of Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe and The Far Right Today.
The first criterion involves nativism.
Nativists believe states should be inhabited and governed primarily by members of the “native” group – often defined in ethnic, cultural or religious terms.
In an interview with Al Jazeera in 2017, Mudde stated that “nativism is about the ethnic ‘us’ and ‘them’, about wanting a [monocultural] state and seeing alien things and people as threatening”.
Although Mudde’s definition is widely accepted, it is not set in stone, and there are nuances in how political scientists apply it.
For example, Daphne Halikiopoulou, chair in comparative politics at the University of York in England, believes the term nativism is too narrow. She prefers to use “nationalism” because some modern, more moderate far-right parties project an “inclusive nationalist agenda” that is no longer based on race.
The second involves populism.
Mudde and Chilean political scientist Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser’s book Populism: A Very Short Introduction, describes it as a “thin-centred ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic camps, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’.”
They said populists see democracy as betrayed rather than broken – something to be reclaimed from corrupt elites rather than overthrown.
Marta Lorimer, a lecturer in politics in the School of Law and Politics at Cardiff University, told Al Jazeera that populism can be “an aspect of a party’s ideology or of their messaging, but it’s not the core that makes them recognisable”.
The term alone does not define what you believe – but how you frame politics, she explained.
Charismatic leaders often use populism – as is the case with Greece’s Syriza party – to frame citizens as victims of elite corruption while positioning themselves as champions of the people.
The third criterion of “far right” ideology is authoritarianism, a preference for order, obedience and strong, highly centralised leadership, as opposed to pluralism or liberal democracy.
Mudde, in his book, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, said that in an authoritarian system, infringements of authority are to be “punished severely”.
But even within the far right, there are distinctions to be made.