Far-right

**Far-right politics** are politics further on the right of the left–right spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of extreme nationalism, nativist ideologies, and authoritarian tendencies.

Used to describe the historical experiences of fascism and Nazism, it today includes neo-fascism, neo-Nazism, Third Position, the alt-right, white nationalism and other ideologies or organizations that feature ultranationalist, chauvinist, xenophobic, theocratic, racist, homophobic, anti-communist, or reactionary views. These can lead to oppression, violence, forced assimilation, ethnic cleansing, and even genocide against groups of people based on their supposed inferiority, or their perceived threat to the native ethnic group, nation, state, national religion, dominant culture or ultraconservative traditional social institutions.
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*, in other words the idealization of a "we" excluding a "they". The far-right thus tends to absolutize differences between nations, races, individuals or cultures since they disrupt their efforts towards the utopian dream of the organicist community, reconnected to its quasi-eternal nature and established on firm metaphysical foundations. As they view their community in a state of decay facilitated by the ruling elites, far-right members portray themselves as a natural, sane and alternative elite, with the redemptive mission of saving society from its promised doom. The current political order is presented as needing to be abandoned or purged of impurity, so that the "redemptive community" can leave the phase of liminal crisis to usher in the new era. The community itself is idealized through great archetypal figures (the golden age, the savior, decadence, global conspiracies), as they glorify irrationalistic and non-materialistic values such as the youth or the cult of the past.

Political scientist Cas Mudde defines the far-right as a combination of four broad concepts: exclusivism (i.e., racism, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, or ethnopluralism); antidemocratic, non-individualist traits (i.e., cult of personality, hierarchism, monism, populism, antipartyism, an organicist view of the state); a traditionalist value system lamenting the disappearance of historic frames of reference (i.e., law and order, the family, the ethnic, linguistic and religious community and nation, as well as the natural environment); 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. Mudde then proposes a subdivision of the far-right nebula into moderate and radical leanings, according to their degree of exclusionism and essentialism.

Far-right politics includes but is not limited to aspects of authoritarianism, anti-communism and nativism. Claims that superior people should have greater rights than inferior people are often associated with the far-right, as they have historically favored a darwinistic or elitist hierarchy based on the belief in the legitimacy of the rule of a supposed superior minority over the inferior masses.

### Modern debates

According to Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg, the modern ambiguities in the definition of the "far-right" lie in the fact that the concept is generally used by political adversaries to "disqualify and stigmatize all forms of partisan nationalism by reducing them to the historical experiments of Italian Fascism [and] German National Socialism." While the existence of such a political position is widely accepted among scholars, figures associated with the far-right rarely accept this denomination, preferring terms like "national movement" or "national right". There is also debate about how appropriate the labels fascist or neo-fascist are. 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".

Aspects of fascist 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 the case of Nazism resulted in genocide. Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform in London, has distinguished between right-wing nationalist parties—which are often described as far-right such as the National Front in France—and fascism. One issue is whether parties should be labelled radical or extreme, a distinction that is made by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany when determining whether or not a party should be banned: an *extremist* party opposes liberal democracy and the constitutional order, while a *radical* one accepts free elections and the parliament as legitimate structures. Another question is what the label "right" implies when it is applied to the extreme right, given the fact that many parties that were originally labeled right-wing extremist tended to advance neoliberal and free market agendas as late as the 1980s, but now advocate economic policies which are more traditionally associated with the left, such as anti-globalization, nationalization and protectionism. One approach, drawing on the writings of Norberto Bobbio, argues that attitudes towards political equality are what distinguish the left from the right and they therefore allow these parties to be positioned on the right of the political spectrum.Template:Citation needed

Right-wing populism, a political ideology that often combines *laissez-faire* capitalism, nationalism, ethnocentrism and anti-elitism, is sometimes described as far-right. Right-wing populism often involves appeals to the "common man" and opposition to immigration. Far-right politics sometimes involves anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are deemed inferior and undesirable. Concerning the socio-cultural dimension of nationality, culture and migration, one far-right position is the view that certain ethnic, racial or religious groups should stay separate and it is based on the belief that the interests of one's own group should be prioritized.

Proponents of the horseshoe theory interpretation of the left–right spectrum identify the far-left and the far-right as having more in common with each other as extremists than each of them has with moderate centrists.

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