Far-right politics

Far-right ideologies have historically included fascism, Nazism, and Falangism, while contemporary manifestations also incorporate neo-fascism, neo-Nazism, white supremacy, and various other movements characterized by chauvinism, xenophobia, and theocratic or reactionary beliefs.

Far-right movements frequently target perceived threats to their idealized community, whether ethnic, religious, or cultural, leading to anti-immigrant sentiments, welfare chauvinism, and, in extreme cases, political violence or oppression.

[5] Across these contexts, far-right politics has continued to influence discourse, occasionally achieving electoral success and prompting significant debate over its place in democratic societies.According to scholars Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg, the core of the far right's worldview is organicism, the idea that society functions as a complete, organized and homogeneous living being.

Adapted to the community they wish to constitute or reconstitute (whether based on ethnicity, nationality, religion or race), the concept leads them to reject every form of universalism in favor of autophilia and alterophobia, or in other words the idealization of a "we" excluding a "they".

[6] Political scientist Cas Mudde argues that the far right can be viewed as a combination of four broadly defined concepts, namely exclusivism (e.g. racism, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, ethnopluralism, chauvinism, including welfare chauvinism), anti-democratic and non-individualist traits (e.g. cult of personality, hierarchism, monism, populism, anti-particracy, an organicist view of the state), a traditionalist value system lamenting the disappearance of historic frames of reference (e.g. law and order, the family, the ethnic, linguistic and religious community and nation as well as the natural environment[9]) and a socioeconomic program associating corporatism, state control of certain sectors, agrarianism, and a varying degree of belief in the free play of socially Darwinistic market forces.

[12] According to political scientist Lubomír Kopeček, "[t]he best working definition of the contemporary far right may be the four-element combination of nationalism, xenophobia, law and order, and welfare chauvinism proposed for the Western European environment by Cas Mudde.

[18][13] Mudde defines the American radical right as an "old school of nativism, populism, and hostility to central government [which] was said to have developed into the post-World War II combination of ultranationalism and anti-communism, Christian fundamentalism, militaristic orientation, and anti-alien sentiment.

In the words of Mudde, "the labels Neo-Nazi and to a lesser extent neo-Fascism are now used exclusively for parties and groups that explicitly state a desire to restore the Third Reich or quote historical National Socialism as their ideological influence.

"[26] Aspects of far-right ideology can be identified in the agenda of some contemporary right-wing parties: in particular, the idea that superior persons should dominate society while undesirable elements should be purged, which in extreme cases has resulted in genocides.

"[49] The main reason for that ideological confusion can be found in the consequences of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, which according to Swiss historian Philippe Burrin had completely redesigned the political landscape in Europe by diffusing the idea of an anti-individualistic concept of "national unity" rising above the right and left division.

[48] As the concept of "the masses" was introduced into the political debate through industrialization and the universal suffrage, a new right-wing founded on national and social ideas began to emerge, what Zeev Sternhell has called the "revolutionary right" and a foreshadowing of fascism.

[53] It was characterized by a rejection of the established social order, with revolutionary tendencies and anti-capitalist stances, a populist and plebiscitary dimension, the advocacy of violence as a means of action and a call for individual and collective palingenesis ("regeneration, rebirth").

[55] In a 1961 book deemed influential in the European far-right at large, French neo-fascist writer Maurice Bardèche introduced the idea that fascism could survive the 20th century under a new metapolitical guise adapted to the changes of the times.

The most notable example of this was Josef Mengele, a Nazi SS officer and physician known as the "Angel of Death" for his deadly experiments on prisoners at the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) concentration camp, who fled first to Argentina, then Paraguay, before finally settling in Brazil in 1960.

[122][125][126] The Central Intelligence Agency and Simon Wiesenthal also provided evidence of Josef Mengele – the infamous Nazi concentration camp doctor known as the "Angel of Death" for his lethal experiments on human subjects – being present in Colonia Dignidad.

It was historically a movement of the Roman Catholic extreme right, in some ways akin to clerical fascism and Falangism, strongly opposed to the left-wing and secularist policies of the Institutional Revolutionary Party and its predecessors that governed Mexico from 1929 to 2000 and 2012 to 2018.

[180] These far-right groups share conspiracist views of power which are overwhelmingly anti-Semitic and reject pluralist democracy in favour of an organic oligarchy that would unite the perceived homogeneously racial Völkish nation.

[184] The Ku Klux Klan claimed that there was a secret Catholic army within the United States loyal to the Pope, that one million Knights of Columbus were arming themselves, and that Irish-American policemen would shoot Protestants as heretics.

However, proto-fascist movements such as Huey Long's Share Our Wealth and Charles Coughlin's National Union for Social Justice emerged which differed from other right-wing groups by attacking big business, calling for economic reforms, and rejecting nativism.

Neo-Nazi militant Robert Jay Matthews of the White supremacist group The Order came to support the John Birch Society, especially when conservative icon Barry Goldwater from Arizona ran for the presidency on the Republican Party ticket.

These groups expressed concern for what they perceived as government tyranny within the United States and generally held constitutionalist, libertarian, and right-libertarian political views, with a strong focus on the Second Amendment gun rights and tax protest.

[195] Its proponents believed that the United States was under threat from "Islamic supremacism", accusing the Council on American-Islamic Relations and even prominent conservatives such as Suhail A. Khan and Grover Norquist of supporting radical Islamist groups and organizations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

Activists affiliated with such groups have used Molotov cocktails and time bombs to intimidate moderate Japanese politicians and public figures, including former Deputy Foreign Minister Hitoshi Tanaka and Fuji Xerox Chairman Yotaro Kobayashi.

[289][291][292][293] In March 2021, the Germany domestic intelligence agency Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution placed the AfD under surveillance, the first time in the post-war period that a main opposition party had been subjected to such scrutiny.

Some ideologues of the white movement, such as Ivan Ilyin and Vasily Shulgin, welcomed the coming to power of Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in Germany, offering their comrades-in-arms the fascist "method" as a way to fight socialism, communism, and godlessness.

[392] The BNP and the NF supported extreme loyalism in Northern Ireland, and attracted Conservative Party members who had become disillusioned after Harold Macmillan had recognised the right to independence of the African colonies and had criticised Apartheid in South Africa.

A number of breakaway groups have been established by former members of the BNP, such as Britain First by ex-councillor Paul Golding, the British Democrats by ex-MEP and leadership candidate Andrew Brons, as well as Patriotic Alternative by Mark Collett.

Since 2001, Australia has seen the development of modern neo-Nazi, neo-fascist or alt-right groups such as the True Blue Crew, the United Patriots Front, Fraser Anning's Conservative National Party and the Antipodean Resistance.

[427] In 2021, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), an international think-tank, exposed more than two hundred neo-Nazi pro-terrorism telegram channels that make up the Terrorgram network, many of which contained instructions to build weapons and bombs.

[431] The core of this movement includes neo-fascist skinheads, far-right hooligans, youth sympathisers and intellectual guides who believe that the state must rid itself of foreign elements in order to protect rightful citizens.