Your Comprehensive Guide to the Far Right: Part I

Understanding this rising threat to liberalism across the world is the first step to defeating it

(The UnPopulist illustration)

Dear Readers:

The UnPopulist is not the kind of publication where you expect to see an FAQ or a Frequently Asked Questions page. Essays, podcasts, videos—sure. We publish those all the time. But an FAQ?

The typical FAQ, which companies and organizations stuff at the bottom of their homepages so that they don’t have to answer those same questions again and again, is a dryly informative resource that never touches on anything of controversy. FAQs tend to be bloodless documents.

Not this one.

This is an FAQ on the far right—an ideology and movement that we have quite strong feelings about. However, it can be hard to convey the full magnitude of this threat in a standard essay because its format requires a clear narrative arc that often leaves out disparate strands that don’t neatly fit in the story.

The FAQ framework, however, is an expository device that makes it possible to knit together different aspects of this very complex phenomenon into one easy-to-digest whole.

There are few people on the planet more qualified to put together this FAQ than Janet Bufton, co-founder of the Institute for Liberal Studies, and Tom G. Palmer, Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute. They have been studying every aspect of this movement—its history, intellectual influences, and tactics—for a long time. Together, they have created a deeply erudite and informative resource that can not only stand up to scholarly scrutiny but also serve as a one-stop shop for anyone who wishes to understand what is the biggest threat to liberalism of our times.

The FAQ will come in two parts. Today we are publishing Part I, which gives you an in-depth look into what far-right ideology is and how it is being put into action all around the world.

Unlike most FAQs, this one is compellingly written. So once you start reading it, you won’t want to put it down till you’ve read it all the way through. But you’ll also want to bookmark it, since it’s a versatile and useful resource that you will often want to return to.

Berny Belvedere
Senior Editor

All around the world, the far right is ascendant. But what is the far right, what does it want, and how does it seek to achieve its goals?

Diving even deeper: What is the difference between the mainstream right and the far right? Since far-right political forces have attained positions of power in a number of countries, has it effectively become the mainstream right in those places? Is the far right a transnational political project whose individual chapters are officially working together, or is each country’s far-right movement autonomous and independent of any of the others? What are the intellectual foundations of the far right? Why is the far right finding more success today than at any time in recent memory?

We have prepared a comprehensive resource guide to answer such questions. Taking the form of a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), this guide will cover the far right’s origins, ideology, objectives, and practices.

As the questions themselves suggest, the far right is not a dormant but an active threat. All over the world, far-right movements are calling for closed and hierarchical societies, and the far-right parties that have managed to reach power are doing everything they can to impose such visions.

It is not possible to counter this movement without first understanding it. In fact, liberals’ unfamiliarity with and dismissiveness toward the far right may have facilitated its rise, since the far right has gained significant ground in a very short time.

Our hope is to help defenders of free and open societies better understand, and thus more effectively oppose, this movement. We will present this guide in two installments. The first one, which we’re publishing today, broadly answers: What is the far right? The second one, which we will publish in the future, answers the following questions: What does the far right want, and how will it try to achieve it?

Part I: What Is the Far Right?

• What is the far right?

• Why should I care about the far right?

• Who supports the far right?

• How is the far right different from conservatism?

• What intellectual figures and traditions inform the far right?

• What role do women play in far-right activism?

• Why is antisemitism so strongly tied to the far right?

• Is the global far right an interconnected movement, or an agglomeration of separate and distinct submovements?

What is the far right?

The term “far right” refers to a political or philosophical persuasion—there are far-right figures, far-right movements, and far-right political parties. Its most infamous historical embodiments are fascism and National Socialism (Nazism), two allied movements that exemplified the core principles of the far right.

The tenets of the far right involve some combination of hardline social conservatism, ultra-nationalism (especially ethnic nationalism, or nativism), populism or anti-elitism, and authoritarianism. Although far-right figures, movements, and parties around the world often differ in their degrees of radicalness, all who subscribe to some combination of the above doctrines are properly characterized as far right.

Of those doctrines, an ideology called “identitarianism” by many of its adherents, and that usually takes the form of ethnic nationalism, is the most critical to far-right ideology. This label is more common in Europe, but was also used by followers of “Identity Evropa” (later the American Identity Movement), and is useful to the far right. The other tenets can feature in far-left movements around the globe (populism, authoritarianism) and in right-wing politics that stop short of being far right (milder forms of social conservatism). Identitarianism is a focus on national or ethnic identity (often identified with “blood”) that is most distinctly far right. Identitarianism furnishes its adherents with a clear in-group and outgroup binary that they then apply to any number of ancillary policy areas, such as welfare provisions and immigration. A similar idea, “nativism,” says the extremism scholar Cas Mudde, “holds that states should be inhabited exclusively by members of the native group (the nation) and that non-native elements (persons and ideas) are fundamentally threatening to the homogenous nation-state.” This is why far-right thinkers and activists posit a conflict between the “true people” and the enemies of the people.

The “true people,” according to the post-Marxist theorist (and promoter of militant populism) Ernesto LaClau, is constructed by identifying an enemy, which effectively creates “a frontier of exclusion [that] divides society into two camps.” As LaClau puts it: “The ‘people,’ in that case, is something less than the totality of the members of the community: it is a partial component which nonetheless aspires to be conceived as the only legitimate totality.”

Members of the far right generally root their claims in one or another conspiracy theory, often involving Jews, a “Great Replacement” (of white people by people of color, or of those coded as “patriots” by foreigners), “financial interests,” globalists, foreigners, immigrants, all against the “true people.” They dismiss the liberal idea of forming one’s own identity and see identities as collective and fixed, either handed down through nations, cultures, or races or created through acts of will by powerful leaders.

The far right includes ultra-nationalists and national-religious chauvinists, white nationalists, militia movements, identitarians, Fascists, National Socialists (Nazis), the various groups that have emerged from what was called the “alt-right,” and other groups and movements with their own specific ethnic, religious, or racial emphases. Those groups are united in sometimes implausible alliances by a shared hatred of pluralism and liberalism. For example, consider the consolidation of the American White Power movement that united American neo-Nazis and KKK members who were World War II veterans that had fought Nazis in Europe, or the tension in the alliance between prominent female activists for white nationalism and a paternalistic movement that sees women’s proper place in the home and as possessions or prizes.

Despite their alliance against the live-and-let-live philosophy of liberalism, the groups making up the far right are often aware that they are also potential enemies. To take an obvious example, ultra-nationalist identities clash, since the followers of each assume that their nation is better than the others and should dominate them. If their common enemy of liberal tolerance were to be dispatched, so would their reasons for cooperation. In turn, these groups would be primed to fall on one another in violent conflict over control of territory.

Descending into violence is not, from the perspective of many far-right groups, such a bad thing—their worldviews share a common belief in the superiority of the warrior ethic to “bourgeois” life in tolerant and cooperative civil societies. Violent conflict, in their view, makes for manly, robust, strong, and powerful societies by revealing through struggle the power hierarchies that should govern our social existence.

Although Part II will consider the far right’s goals more thoroughly, a partial snapshot of its objectives include replacing:

• the rule of law with illiberal authoritarianism—or at least a state that clearly favors the in-group;

• democratic discourse with decisive action and obedience to the in-group;

• voluntary market exchange with conscious state direction of economic relations;

• equality before the law with the supremacy of allegedly superior groups; and

• tolerant live-and-let-live pluralism with the enforcement of values that enshrine the favored group as superior or supreme.

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Why should I care about the far right?

The far right influences political parties and organizations in Europe, Latin America, and North America, as well as media outlets—some of which have repackaged inflammatory far-right ideas in more palatable forms.

The most infamous historical embodiment of the far right were the German Nazis, who continue to inspire the manifestos and thinking of contemporary white nationalists.

The far right’s attack on liberty is frequently coordinated across borders, often with the help of authoritarian or totalitarian governments, such as those of Hungary and Russia. Moreover, violent far-right activists find inspiration from their predecessors, as they frequently copy and paste elements of previous manifestos (especially Timothy McVeigh and Anders Breivik) into their own justifications. (See our discussion of how the global far right is an interconnected movement.)

The far right has also spurred chaotic uprisings at the U.S. Capitol and across Britain. It has secured power in Hungary, enjoyed recent electoral success in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Czechia, Slovakia, and in the European Parliament, and was only stopped in France’s most recent elections through a tactical left-liberal alliance.

The Russian state sponsors far-right movements around the globe and, in turn, they tend to be radically deferential to Russia, even going so far as to promote capitulation to Russian invasion, as far-right Hungarian ideologue and government spokesman Balázs Orbán recently did when he criticized Ukrainian resistance in the face of the Russian invasion and genocide.

In other words, far-right movements are not merely a theoretical threat to free and open societies. They already occupy positions of power in legislatures and executive branches in a number of countries, and they are increasingly influential in the broader realm of politics and ideas.

Not all anti-liberals are members of the far right, but all members of the far right are anti-liberal.

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Who supports the far right?

Far-right movements tend to draw support from disaffected, alienated, and angry individuals and groups. They may be rich or poor, more or less educated, employed or not. More unifying than any socioeconomic characteristic is a shared, strongly negative attitude toward the present state of the world and especially a sense of underappreciation, persecution, or heightened threat perception. Those attitudes encourage and intensify feelings of anger, resentment, and hostility. The feeling is not focused primarily on how an individual is faring, but on how the individual perceives his or her group to be faring relative to others. It is not merely personal threats that matter, as political psychologist Karen Stenner documents, but “normative threats”: “threats to the normative order” or “to oneness and sameness.”

It is a mistake to associate far-right movements exclusively with strutting, violent gangs of uneducated and ignorant thugs. Such groups play their role, but the initiators and the leaders of far-right movements are often erudite, multilingual, educated figures who motivate and direct committed networks of activists. Street gangs are useful not only to strongmen looking to undermine democratic peace—see Donald Trump’s call on the violent, far-right Proud Boys, who played a prominent role in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, to “stand back and stand by”—but also to intellectuals who feel that their genius is insufficiently appreciated by society at large and who are willing to mobilize violence to seize control and to avenge themselves.

Moreover, it is a mistake to conflate far-right movements with military-style uniforms, a “skinhead” look, or tightly choreographed mass rallies. One of the changes that marked the shift of far-right politics from the shadows into the open in the 2010s was a less extreme far-right aesthetic. Especially in an age of irony, such as ours, we cannot expect fascism and other forms of authoritarianism to arrive clothed like the fascist movements of the past.

Far-right movements rely heavily on emotional appeals for broader recruitment, with special emphasis on resentment arising from a sense of unrecognized status. “Natural” collective superiority ascribed to characteristics such as skin color, gender, genetic or ethnic heritage, or birthplace is a core belief of the far right. That attitude is heard in popular discourse in many forms, including the claims that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” or that they make the country “dirtier.” The attitude is sanitized using bland-sounding terms like calls for “remigration.”

Key to the far-right worldview is the belief that the status of its members should “naturally” place them at the top of legal and social hierarchies. Even if their incomes, wealth, and opportunities, as measured in absolute terms, have increased over time, a perceived fall in relative collective status seems to trigger authoritarian and collectivist responses.

Influential in shaping the rhetoric and strategy of today’s ascendant far right are political activists such as Martin Sellner, Paul Joseph Watson, Katie Hopkins, and Tommy Robinson in Europe and the U.K., and “groyper” leader Nick Fuentes, Jack Posobiec, and Tucker Carlson in the United States. The far right forges white nationalist ties to the U.S. Republican Party, and organizes for Christian nationalism and to undermine elections. Far-right conferences bring adherents together, including internationally, and promote extremism. They cannot be written off as mere fringe online personalities. Stephen Miller has already been elevated once to the White House in his crusade against immigration, including legal immigration, and Nigel Farage was recently elected to a seat in the U.K. Parliament.

Far-right movements are resourceful and effective at attaching their resentment to popular issues, notably the perceived rise in the relative status of members of other groups (immigrants, trans people and the broader LGBTQ community, ethnic minorities, women), and immigration leading to “over foreignerization” (Überfremdung in German). Entire categories of criminality are created based on selecting crimes committed by members of a group, then categorizing those crimes using the identity-based grouping, and finally painting all members of the group as a menace using the new category of crimes as evidence. The category of “Jewish crimes” pioneered by the Nazis has been updated to create “immigrant crimes” for the far right’s current purposes. Such trends are intended to trigger what Karen Stenner calls “authoritarian groupiness,” a term that well characterizes the mentality and the ideologies of the far right.

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How is the far right different from conservatism?

Members of the far right adopt the “conservative” label to downplay the extremeness of their views and to position themselves as part of a more mainstream movement. They use conservatism as, in the words of neo-Nazi Louis Beam, “camouflage … defined as the ability to blend in the public’s eye the more committed groups of resistance with mainstream ‘kosher’ associations that are generally seen as harmless.” This also encourages inclusion of their content with more moderate conservative viewpoints, increasing their potential exposure. But the far-right movement is not simply an extension of the conservatism we once knew, either in its intellectual roots or in what it sees as the implications of conservative positions. 

There has been a rediscovery and dissemination of the texts and ideas of the “Conservative Revolution” and the related revolt against modernity known as “Traditionalism,” which is not the same as normal or everyday appeals to traditional values. The core belief of the Conservative Revolution is not reverence for timeless wisdom from the past, nor caution about uncontrolled or too-rapid change, but radical relativism backed up by (in a clear contradiction) the one objective “truth” that they have the power to exterminate those who disagree. The core ideas of the “Conservative Revolution” have been reappropriated by today’s far right.

The thought of Edgar Julius Jung, a leading figure of the German post-WWI Conservative Revolution movement, helps to illustrate how revolutionary ideas like those pursued by the far right can be given a conservative label. He claimed that what matters are not principles or long-established practices, but a set of various claims elevated to a higher status as “values.” Typically, such “values” are associated with romantic presentations of pre-modern societies, notably strength, valor, manliness, sacrifice, power, obedience, loyalty, resoluteness, aggression, and a keen willingness to use violence. He goes on:

The impulse to preserve these [values] at any price, can be called conservative. Insofar as previous generally valid judgements of value are suited to generate a false attitude toward these highest values, to that extent we are for a “revaluation of all values.” If this revaluation is equivalent to the overthrow of things, then we may be called revolutionary. Our justification is this, that one must, from the deepest will to preservation, destroy.

The Conservative Revolution, Traditionalism, and the obliteration of objective truth have been revived in unison by far-right ideologues such as Aleksandr Dugin, a prominent and explicit promoter of Russian genocide against Ukrainians. Dugin has presented that belief in many forums, through far-right millennial influencers, and more recently via Tucker Carlson—a coup for the Russian far right.

Right-wing strategist Steve Bannon, who once pledged to make the world “as exciting as the 1930s,” promotes the ideas of the Italian Traditionalist Julius Evola, who wrote: “We would like a more radical, more intrepid Fascism, a really absolute Fascism, made of pure force, inaccessible to compromise.” Evola has deeply influenced far-right movements in Europe, such as the French “New Right.”

Despite its differences from liberal or moderate conservatism, it benefits the far right to appropriate the conservative label for itself. During the consolidation of the white power movement in the United States (during and after the Vietnam War), for instance, Kathleen Belew documents how the far right politically coded many of its messages as anti-communist to create an impression of common cause with mainstream conservatism.

More recently, the sociologist Eviane Leidig has documented how during the heyday of the alt-right, far-right influencers on social media repeatedly asserted that they are merely conservative while espousing white nationalism or identitarian collectivism, and whitewashing authoritarian politicians and governments. Positioning themselves as conservative downplayed how radical their content was and resulted in social media algorithms lumping them in with more mainstream conservative content. “It keeps happening” said David French of the frequency with which far-right figures have been able to position themselves, at least for a while, as merely conservative. As the American political right has picked up more talking points amenable to the far right, these lines have blurred even further.

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What intellectual figures and traditions inform the far right?

Contemporary far-right thinkers have also drawn from the works of National Socialists such as Martin Heidegger, whose philosophy was entwined with Nazi ideological racist collectivism, and Carl Schmitt, an influential jurist who embraced National Socialism. Original Nazi ideology has been passed down and modernized through the white nationalist movement. Its influence can be seen today in the prevalence of the dog whistles “14” (for David Lane’s 14 words) and “88” (for ”Heil Hitler” or as a reference to Lane’s 88 Precepts). The mythology provided by these movements provides the direction for the far right despite their dispersed organization. 

Schmitt has been called “the century’s most brilliant enemy of liberalism,” and the basics of his ideology can help explain much of contemporary far-right politics. Schmitt posited a “concept of the political” that was distinctive. He said, “the specific political distinction … can be reduced to that between friend and enemy.” For Schmitt, “only in real combat is revealed the most extreme consequence of the political grouping of friend and enemy. From this most extreme possibility human life derives its specifically political tension.” Conflict, with its focal point in extreme violence, is central to the thinking of the far right. There is no possibility of peaceful political disagreement.

Schmitt’s ideas permeate the revival of Russian imperialism and have had a major influence across far-right movements founded on the idea of heroic struggles against “the enemy.” (His ideas also play a role in the new “National Conservatism” movement, as well as in both far-right and far-left movements.)

Hermann Rauschning, who joined and later left the National Socialist movement (and who, to his credit, warned the world about what Hitler and “the movement” were planning), admitted in his 1941 book how central Conservative Revolutionary thinking was to the National Socialist seizure of power. He observed that it was the path,

…along which we came to the Single Party; it was that which made National Socialism appear to us to be not entirely repulsive and which suggested to us that it might contain material which could be so shaped as in the end to provide us with a really practicable new solution. It was a mistake, and indeed, a fatal one.

But was it so reprehensible or even so stupid as it is usually represented in democratic quarters?

The question of whether it was so reprehensible or so stupid is even more relevant today, now that we know better the horrors perpetrated by the regime that was ushered in by the “Conservative Revolution.”

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What role do women play in far-right activism?

Women are generally less visible in a movement that seems to be composed mainly of “lost boys.” While fewer women than men are involved in far-right activism, female participation is far from negligible.

Far-right movements that emphasize traditionalism conceive of a woman’s role as primarily located in the private sphere. Men command the public sphere, and the “public” role of women is to provide support to men and the community, rather than pursue their own personal aspirations. Consequently, despite some high-profile women on the far right, they tend to be less visible. It is tempting to see women involved in often intensely misogynistic movements as simply foolish, but there is a deeper reason for the appeal of the far right to those women who embrace it.

Women serve a role framed in far-right movements as heroic: they are responsible for giving birth to new members of the movement (especially in racist and ethnonationalist movements) and protecting children and the home sphere from the corruption of a hostile liberal world.

Some far-right movements formalize the veneration of women; for example, new members of the white supremacist paramilitary group The Order took their membership oaths while standing around a white female infant. Veneration, the responsibility of perpetuating a pure and chosen people, and the perceived act of creating and protecting pockets of an ideal society form a basis for pride in and recognition within their communities for the private role of far-right women.

Despite advocating that women’s primary obligation is to their home life, women on the far right have found ways to play a special role in the “propaganda” efforts by humanizing the far right to make it both more mainstream, more available, and more palatable. This is especially true as online activism has made it possible to create and distribute political messaging from the home, with performative feminine caring and intimacy.

An illustration of how far-right women contribute can be seen in the connection of the “tradwife” aesthetic to contemporary far right and especially white nationalist movements documented by Eviane Leidig and Seyward Darby. The tradwife trend did not originate with the far right and certainly not all, or even most, tradwives are members of the far right. (Neither are all women involved with the far right tradwives. The trad wife aesthetic is one part of a wide array of appeals deployed by the variegated groups that embrace far-right ideologies.)

Tradwife social media is a popular tool for far-right women to engage in activism and outreach, where they are able to operate as themselves on mainstream platforms, like Instagram and YouTube, rather than anonymously in the internet’s darkest corners. It is part and parcel of a general rejection of modernity in favor of organic food and clothing and—frequently—the rejection of modern medicine. The aesthetic of purity and the rejection of modernity dovetail with discussions of national and racial purity and the need to shield oneself and one’s family life from an impure world. (Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t always turn out like they expected.)

Tradwife and other far-right women influencers perform their far-right politics as part of an aspirational lifestyle. They portray “traditional” household roles as not only laudable, but a cure for the personal and social unhappiness and disorder that comes from liberalism’s overturning of “natural” hierarchies, especially through widespread acceptance of feminism and LGBTQ rights. (Leidig finds that anti-feminism was the unifying factor of the online community of women in the alt-right.) In addition, they work to convince men who are vulnerable to radicalization that the movement includes women who can provide a fulfilling home life.

Tradwives are only one example. It is not an aesthetic but the overarching goals of the far right that unify women in the movement. Less feminine strains in far right activism by women—notably among more androgynous and aggressive women among the racist skinheads of the 1980s and 1990s—still emphasized the role of women as mothers of the white race. It should not be surprising that women take part not only as online influencers—not all of whom are tradwives (Brittany Sellner, Lauren Southern, Thaïs d'Escufon, Ayla Stewart, Eva Vlaardingerbroek, Laura Loomer) but also as political leaders (Marine Le Pen, Marjorie Taylor Greene), and media personalities (Lauren Chen, Faith Goldy, Katie Hopkins, Lana Lokteff).

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Why is antisemitism so strongly tied to the far right?

Although it is not at present as overt as anti-immigrant (especially anti-Muslim) discrimination among the far right, antisemitism is nearly ubiquitous in these movements. Where it is not overt, it is often just below the surface. Prejudice against Jewish people is older than the far right and held more broadly. But even when anti-Jewish prejudices are not deeply held, it is useful to the far right to have a group of scapegoats who are commonly considered either “rootless” or loyal only to Jewish institutions.

There is one straightforward reason for antisemitism in the far right—the prevalence of neo-Nazi thought among many of the movement’s leaders. Understanding the worldview originally developed by Nazis can shed light on many antisemitic tropes on the far right. Here we lay out some of the more abstract roots of far-right antisemitism to help readers know it when they see it.

Before the establishment of the state of Israel, Jews were often portrayed as a people without a home—according to people for whom “blood and soil” is inseparable from identity, Jews had no “soil.” Indeed, the Nazis stressed that Jews were “nomadic” and without soil. The underlying principle in search of justification here is mistrust of Jews, and so the establishment of Israel merely created a state to which Jews were assumed to be loyal, regardless of whichever place they call home.

Combined with the authoritarian populist belief in a country’s one “true people,” assumed natural loyalty to a foreign country is asserted to preclude the possibility that Jewish citizens can be truly loyal to any other country or institution. Thus, for the far right, Jews are the perpetual foreigners who are among the people but can never be part of the people.

When banned from owning land or engaging in many trades, Jews often took up the professions left to them and were condemned for it—especially work as moneylenders, bankers, merchants, and tax collectors. When Christians were banned from charging interest, Jews were able to fill the role of mediating between net borrowers and net savers, i.e., banking. That led to Jews being characterized as inherently money-loving, greedy, and unwilling to do real work, thus, as “manipulative parasites.” The related framing of Jews as wealthy financial elites that is frequently found in the antisemitism of the far-left provides additional cover for far-right antisemitism.

Antisemitism can manifest in apparently contradictory ways, as illustrated by Donald Trump, who tells Jewish Americans that Israel is “your country” and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “your prime minister,” implicitly denying they can be real or loyal Americans. He further insists that Jews who do not support his candidacy are not just political opponents, but bad Jews. Plausible deniability for his antisemitism comes from his praise for Jews based on racist tropes: that they are politically powerful, that they buy politicians, that they are good at making money. Trump went a step further when he told Israeli Americans in September that Jewish people would be to blame for his potential defeat in the November 2024 election.

Antisemitism has been tied up with anti-Islamic and anti-immigration sentiments through conspiracies such as the “Great Replacement” or “white genocide” conspiracy theories, which claim that there is a secret, organized plot to overwhelm the political power of the “true people,” usually by Jews (in the case of Viktor Orbán, explicitly by George Soros) who seek to control governments and culture. Milder or entry versions of this theory might claim only that immigrants are being brought in to establish an unbeatable political majority to force through political, demographic, and cultural change. Such claims of Jewish conspiracy have real-world consequences. The mass murderer at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018 ranted online about Jewish support for refugees before his attack.

There is an additional racist concern with immigrants alleged to have higher birth rates—another avenue to overwhelming the “rightful” population, especially Muslim and Hispanic immigrants and refugees. This is often paired with a belief that Jews and other liberals will pursue policies that push down white birth rates. Moreover, language of “poisoning the blood of our country” and “bad genes” plays up the far right’s concerns about race-mixing and cultural degradation.

International Jewish conspirators (now called “Zionist Occupation Government” or “ZOG”) are portrayed in the 1902 conspiracy tract The Protocols of the Elders of Zion attempting to amass political and cultural power and turn it toward greedy or evil ends. Whatever the ends, says the far right, “Jewish plans” are not in the interests of the “true” people. Such alleged meddling by shadowy Jewish figures (typically “bankers,” a coded term for Jews, or specific Jewish financiers like George Soros or the Rothschilds) is blamed for the upset of what the far right deems the natural order. David Lane, a founder of the white-power militia group, The Order, claimed that when he read a pamphlet about Jewish control of American media, that’s when “everything fell into place.”

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Is the global far right an interconnected movement, or an agglomeration of separate and distinct submovements?

The global far right benefits from two complementary organizational strategies. The first is a collaborative global network of formal organizations, especially political parties and autocratic governments, that hijack formal institutions to benefit their cause. The second is the result of a decades-old strategy that encourages cell-style organization of more radical far right actors. Actions by the former, though not necessarily intended for this purpose, allow the latter to thrive.

The growth of an “Illiberal International” has been promoted by the fragmentation of media, social media campaigns organized by authoritarian states, a conscious assault on the concept of objective truth, the deployment of multiple narratives to make it difficult or impossible to distinguish facts from lies (known as the “firehose of falsehoods”), and training organizations to spread their ideas more effectively. This environment has coincided with the rise of political parties or blocs like Patriots for Europe in the EU Parliament, and gatherings like the National Conservatism conferences in the U.S., U.K., and Europe, and CPAC conferences, now hosted in both Europe and the United States. (The participation of Jewish, LGBTQ people, and members of other minorities in National Conservatism, CPAC, and far-right parties illustrates the sometimes implausible mix of persons that can constitute far-right groups and hint at the ways in which they could violently dissolve if the far right were to achieve their goals, as mentioned earlier in this FAQ. They seem convinced that when their movements—which are focused on demonizing other groups—come to power, they will be immune from such demonization.)

These formal organizations foster and reinforce an environment with dedicated financing, media, training, and employment opportunities in think tanks, training organizations, and political parties. This has subsequently resulted in an increasingly friendly environment for the far right.

Overtly radical voices seemed to spring up everywhere as far-right voices saw signs of mainstream tolerance for their views. This is a result of an organizational strategy of “leaderless resistance,” or cell-style organizing, developed and encouraged starting in the 1980s by the white power movement and spearheaded by Louis Beam.

While Beam claims inspiration from American revolutionary “committees of correspondence,” the technology he thought would change everything was the internet. Beam argued against traditional types of organization with an identifiable, hierarchical leadership structure. Such organizations, he said, had been too often infiltrated and subverted. Instead, he envisioned a dispersed community that shared ideology, goals, and information. They blend social support networks with radical political views and action. Because of their dispersed and loosely associated nature, far-right “cells” cannot simply be infiltrated and shut down. They are difficult even to identify. They are very difficult to stop.

As technology advanced, Beam’s vision grew with it. Most troubling and frightening is the increase in violence inspired by far-right content. The far right has expanded beyond extreme forums for the hardened activists that Beam imagined (such as Stormfront and 8kun/4chan). Leaderless activists now spread their political message on more mainstream platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and X. Their goal can be inferred from the term “redpilled”—it implies that ordinary people can be turned toward far-right goals.

Despite the diverse and dispersed nature of the far right and its separation-by-design of its most radical voices from formal organizations, we can learn to recognize the actors on far right, their arguments, and their goals. In the process, liberals committed to an open and free society can frustrate their ends. It’s to this task that we turn in part 2.

© The UnPopulist, 2024

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