Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are politics further on the right of the left–right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of being authoritarian and ultra-nationalist, as well as having nativist ideologies and tendencies.
Extremism is "the quality or state of being extreme" or "the advocacy of extreme measures or views".
Robert Michels was a German-born Italian sociologist who contributed to elite theory by describing the political behavior of intellectual elites.
Strasserism is a strand of Nazism that calls for a more radical, mass-action and worker-based form of Nazism, espousing economic antisemitism above other antisemitic forms, to achieve a national rebirth. It derives its name from Gregor and Otto Strasser, two brothers initially associated with this position.
David Wulstan Myatt, formerly known as Abdul-Aziz ibn Myatt and Abdul al-Qari, is a British author, religious leader, far-right and Islamist militant, most notable for allegedly being the political and religious leader of the theistic Satanist organization Order of Nine Angles (ONA) from 1974 onwards. He is also the founder of Numinous Way, a former Muslim, and a former Neo-Nazi. Since 2010, Myatt has written extensively about his rejection of his extremist past and about his rejection of extremism in general. Myatt has translated works of ancient Greek literature, translated and written a commentary on the Greek text of eight tractates of the Corpus Hermeticum, and written several collections of poems. In 2017 he embarked on the task of translating and writing a commentary on the Gospel of John and has so far publicly made available chapters 1-4.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is the federal domestic intelligence agency of the Federal Republic of Germany. Together with the Landesämter für Verfassungsschutz (LfV) at the state level, the office is tasked with intelligence-gathering on threats concerning the democratic order, the existence and security of the federation or one of its states, and the peaceful coexistence of peoples; with counter-intelligence; and with protective security and counter-sabotage. The BfV reports to the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The President is Thomas Haldenwang; he was appointed in 2018.
Theodor Julius Geiger was a German socialist, lawyer and sociologist who studied Sociology of Law, social stratification and social mobility, methodology, and intelligentsia, among other things. He was Denmark's first professor of sociology, working at the University of Aarhus (1938–1940).
Seymour Martin Lipset was an American sociologist and political scientist. His major work was in the fields of political sociology, trade union organization, social stratification, public opinion, and the sociology of intellectual life. He also wrote extensively about the conditions for democracy in comparative perspective. A socialist in his early life, Lipset later moved to the right, and was often considered a neoconservative.
In political science and sociology, a cleavage is a historically determined social or cultural line which divides citizens within a society into groups with differing political interests, resulting in political conflict among these groups. Social or cultural cleavages thus become political cleavages once they get politicized as such. Cleavage theory accordingly argues that political cleavages predominantly determine a country's party system as well as the individual voting behavior of citizens, dividing them into voting blocs. It is distinct from other common political theories on voting behavior in the sense that it focuses on aggregate and structural patterns instead of individual voting behaviors.
The Fatherland Front was the right-wing conservative, nationalist and corporatist ruling political organisation of the Federal State of Austria. It claimed to be a nonpartisan movement, and aimed to unite all the people of Austria, overcoming political and social divisions. Established on 20 May 1933 by Christian Social Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss as the only legally permitted party in the country, it was organised along the lines of Italian Fascism, except that the Fatherland Front was fully aligned with the Catholic Church and did not advocate any racial ideology, as later Italian Fascism did. It advocated Austrian nationalism and independence from Germany on the basis of protecting Austria's Catholic religious identity from what they considered a Protestant-dominated German state.
The far right in Switzerland was established in the course of the rise of fascism in Europe in the interwar period. It was a mostly marginal phenomenon in the Cold War period, excepting a surge of radical right-wing populism during the early 1970s, and has again attracted some media attention since 2000. In 2019, 29 incidents related to right-wing extremism were reported in Switzerland compared to 207 of left-wing extremism. Only one incident involved violence.
Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics is a political science book from 1960 by Seymour Martin Lipset.
In political science and popular discourse, the horseshoe theory asserts that the extreme left and the extreme right, rather than being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear political continuum, closely resemble each other, analogous to the way that the opposite ends of a horseshoe are close together.
Jürgen W. Falter is a German political scientist. His research interests include political extremism and xenophobia.
Autonome Nationalisten are German, British, Dutch and to a lesser degree Flemish Nationalists, who have adopted some of the far-left and Antifa's organizational concepts, demonstration tactics, symbolism, and elements of clothing, including Che Guevara T-shirts and keffiyehs. Similar groups have also appeared in some central and eastern European countries, beginning with Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Romania and Greece and others.
In United States politics, the radical right is a political preference that leans towards extreme conservatism, white supremacism, and other right-wing to far-right ideologies in a hierarchical structure paired with conspiratorial rhetoric alongside traditionalist and reactionary aspirations. The term was first used by social scientists in the 1950s regarding small groups such as the John Birch Society in the United States, and since then it has been applied to similar groups worldwide. The term "radical" was applied to the groups because they sought to make fundamental changes within institutions and remove persons and institutions that threatened their values or economic interests from political life.
Anton Maegerle is the Pseudonym of a German journalist. He is also the author of books about far-right politics, right-wing radicalism, the New Right, and right-wing policy in general.
Anti-fascism is a political movement in opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals. Beginning in European countries in the 1920s, it was at its most significant shortly before and during World War II, where the Axis powers were opposed by many countries forming the Allies of World War II and dozens of resistance movements worldwide. Anti-fascism has been an element of movements across the political spectrum and holding many different political positions such as anarchism, communism, pacifism, republicanism, social democracy, socialism and syndicalism as well as centrist, conservative, liberal and nationalist viewpoints.
Antifa is a political movement in Germany composed of multiple far-left, autonomous, militant groups and individuals who describe themselves as anti-fascist. According to the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Agency for Civic Education, the use of the epithet fascist against opponents and the view of capitalism as a form of fascism are central to the movement. The antifa movement has existed in different eras and incarnations, dating back to Antifaschistische Aktion, from which the moniker antifa came. It was set up by the then-Stalinist Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during the late history of the Weimar Republic. After the forced dissolution in the wake of Machtergreifung in 1933, the movement went underground. In the postwar era, Antifaschistische Aktion inspired a variety of different movements, groups and individuals in Germany as well as other countries which widely adopted variants of its aesthetics and some of its tactics. Known as the wider antifa movement, the contemporary antifa groups have no direct organisational connection to Antifaschistische Aktion.
Armin Pfahl-Traughber is a German political scientist, sociologist and government official. He is professor of political science at the Federal University of Applied Administrative Sciences in Germany and is a former director of the office for far-right extremism in the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. He is an expert on far-right and far-left political extremism, terrorism, anti-semitism and the history of ideas. He is editor of the Jahrbuch für Extremismus- und Terrorismusforschung.
