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Since then, Anglo-Saxon academia has resorted to the term “populis”, overlooking the work on the subject carried out by Latin American social sciences since the mid-20th century. These classic works on populism, developed in the face of the region’s rampant crises of political and economic representation, were better positioned to understand the transition to those same crises in contemporary politics. Especially contributions like those of Gino Germani, a foundational thinker for the sociological studies of Argentinian Peronism; and Francisco Weffort and his extensive work on Brazil’s Varguism.

Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde defined the “radical populist right” in his writings but confesses in more recent works that his analyses are Eurocentric. However, authors such as Roberts and Zanotti have applied his categories to the analysis of the phenomenon in Latin America with considerable effectiveness, taking into account regional differences.

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This article aims to develop ideas for interpreting the legitimacy-building and overall behaviour of the far-right in the contemporary world. These vary from country to country and region to region, but due to the internationalisation of communications and the effects of globalisation, they now have much in common.

An International Policy for the Far-Right

The growth of the far-right isn’t permanent, but it is steady, election after election. As happened was Italy and Germany in the first decades of the twentieth century and after the First World War. Like then, period crises have allowed these forces to instrumentalise resentment and prejudice, to grow and expand as political movements offering an authoritarian response to our woes.

While in the dominant, Anglo-Saxon & Western world the milestone that marked the rise of the far-right was Trump’s victory in 2016, in Latin America it was that of Jair Bolsonaro, merely two years later. With a discourse that vindicated dictatorship and torture, this retired military officer built a mass movement that holds its own today as the main opposition—despite having lost the presidential elections by a narrow margin in 2022. It is a movement woven by strings of affective attachment, mostly to its charismatic leader, to whom it pays reverence.

Insofar as there are voices within the field of social science that label the existence of an internationalised far-right as “conspiracy theories”, it is essential to highlight the global links of these groups. What the 50 or so interviews with people linked to or signatories of the Madrid Charter—the most relevant initiative by Spanish party VOX in articulating this “reactionary international”—suggest is that beneath this visible surface lies a denser and deeper network [2][2] These interviews were thoroughly analysed in the book Authoritarian Reconquest: How the Global Right Threatens Democracy in Latin America (Marea, 2022). The follow-up to this work will be published as another book in 2024.. While the research of national-focused factors and country-specific causes is valid, it is hard to argue that theirs is the only appropriate approach. Were that to be true, we would be losing sight of the very much global and interconnected nature of contemporary politics, and how this has influenced the development of far-right movements in recent years.

The abovementioned Spanish political party VOX has played a special role in developing these international networks. Although it has not achieved electoral results as significant as other, newer parties within its ideological family—like Javier Milei’s La Libertad Avanza or Georgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy—it has nevertheless excelled in constructing an international platform for the wider movement.

VOX has been cunning in driving the public conversation through a series of propagandistic notions such as “narco-communism”, “Reconquest”, “Iberosphere” and “Hispanicity”. This palette of ideas has been useful in rehabilitation visions based on the legacy of Francoism and Spanish Falangist nationalism, seducing and establishing connections with sectors of the Latin American and European far-right that were once considered fringe, but that have gained political importance in recent years.

One such example is precisely that of Javier Milei and Victoria Villarruel. Formerly marginal politicians in Argentina, their membership to the VOX networks, closely linked to those of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Latin America, provided them with the opportunity to join international events, share experiences, meet European leaders and see themselves as part of a common movement. Already President of Argentina, Milei himself pointed this out when participating in the Viva 24 convention of the Spanish party, where he said:

“When I started this whole adventure of publicly fighting the culture war, I was lonelier than Adam on Mother’s Day. And in that context, one of the few who embraced me and stood by me when everyone turned their backs was my dear Santiago. I want to start my speech here today by publicly thanking him. Thank you, Santiago.” [3][3] “What Javier Milei said in Spain that sparked conflict with Pedro Sánchez’s government”, La Nación, 21.05.2024.

Similarly, VOX has gathered a diaspora of Latin American exiles, all the way from Castro’s Cuba to Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela. Authoritarian regimes that the left, for its part, refuses to recognise as such; any more than it recognises the harm and suffering that they represent for the people who flee them. Beyond ideological assessments defining the reasons for such harm or suffering, one must note it is unquestionable that these regimes have brought harm, repression, exile and suffering to their political opponents.

The Latin American and to an extent the European left have been reluctant to recognise these facts due to “body solidarity” and the defence of old ideals within their political and historical identity. Thus they have given far-right networks the chance to welcome victims with open arms. People who have suffered the repression of these regimes, as is to be expected from their traumatic experience, lose objectivity in their analysis, and tend to abhor anything that can be related to the notion of “socialism”.

This view converges with VOX’s war narrative, which considers any left-wing force to be part of the so-called “narco-communism”. This contrived notion seeks to identify any left-wing alternative as criminal; as did Trump’s “lock her up” against Hillary Clinton, or Bolsonaro’s “jail or exile for red opponents”. The adoption of this narrative presents an enemy to be fought, no longer an adversary worthy of acknowledgement within the democratic framework of political contest.

VOX’s international articulation has also happened via US-based foundations linked to the Latino wing of the Republican Party, such as the aforementioned CPAC, owned by Matt and Mercedes Schlapp, as well as the Hispanic Republican Committee of Miami. Fittingly enough, Mercedes Schlapp claims her father was imprisoned in the jails of Castrist Cuba, and at the last VOX convention, she emphatically declared: “We have to put an end to the leftists!”

In recent years, CPAC has been exported to various Latin American countries, such as Mexico and Brazil, as well as to other parts of the world, such as Japan and Israel. In Brazil, it has been the son of former president Bolsonaro, Eduardo, who, with his Liberal-Conservative Institute, has organised several editions of CPAC. In Mexico, it has been led by the actor turned ultra-Catholic Eduardo Verástegui, who claims to represent a right-wing alternative outside the traditional party system, accusing the National Action Party (PAN) of adhering to “progressive supremacism”. In this sense, he espouses the idea that any right-wing party that does not share his conservative perspectives represented by the fascist and Francoist slogan “God, country and family” will be labelled “leftist” or “social democrat”. This is a widespread narrative among the different manifestations of the far-right in Latin America and the world.

In turn, VOX has sought to establish ties with emerging far-right candidates in Latin America–namely Milei, Kast, Verástegui, Rafael López Aliaga, Álvaro Uribe and Bolsonaro–while rejecting traditional right & centre-right politicians such as Mauricio Macri, Sebastián Piñera and Juan Manuel Santos, who have long been allies of Spain’s Partido Popular (PP) in the region. In other words, they have deliberately preferred to form alliances with those outsiders willing to align themselves with a “new reactionary international”. This responds to a strategic vision of advancing a political business in a niche that its competitors were not filling.

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Although its proposal has received a mixed response across countries, the Peruvian case deserves special note. There, the Madrid Charter has been signed by all the right-wing parties, as well as by important businessmen who have sponsored the Madrid Forum’s meetings. For instance, Erasmo Wong, a powerful businessman owner of the right-wing conspiracy theorist channel Willax TV. In this respect, the Peruvian case appears to stand out from the rest, probably due to the role Lima played as the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru, and to the legacy of Spanish colonisation still emanating from that period, among other factors.

A Society of Images and the Construction of the Far-Right Narrative

Changes in the media environment have been crucial to the expansion of the far-right. New platforms appeal to a younger, depoliticised audience, connecting with them through the language of celebrities that proliferates on social networks. By spreading and viralising prejudice, social media have become the new means of mass political manipulation. In this environment, illusionists and charlatans masquerade as experts. This is the case of Jordan Peterson, Agustín Laje or Pablo Muñoz Iturrieta, among thousands of other right-wing influencers, who all profit by selling ideas halfway between self-help literature and evangelical preaching. They have thus become the new pop kings of the times, setting up tricks of deception while maintaining “symbiotic relationships” with extremist leaders, according to Rodrigo Nunes’ definition of “political micro-entrepreneurs” [4][4] Nunes, R. (2023). “The coup attack in Brasilia is a sign of Bolsonaro’s strength and weakness.”, Folha de S. Paulo, 11 de enero.. They serve to spread the ideas of this extremist movement and normalise them, sometimes even exerting pressure for further radicalisation [5][5] This notion was introduced in a research project by Stéphanie Alenda..

Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign guru in 2016, was one of the first to recognise the potential of social media as a tool for the far-right, which he dubbed the “national populist movement”. Following the tenet “if you want to change the politics, you must first change culture”, Banon has illustrated the importance of these “culture wars” through the pivotal role of his website Breitbart News. This is especially true in regard to audience segmentation on social media, as evidenced by the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2016 [6][6] Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm, gained global notoriety due to its involvement in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The company used the personal data of millions of Facebook users, obtained without their consent, to create psychological profiles and run highly targeted political advertising. Steve Bannon, himself a former vice president at Cambridge Analytica and chief strategist for the Trump campaign, played a crucial role in implementing these microtargeting strategies, contributing to Trump’s electoral success. The controversy revealed concerns about data privacy and electoral manipulation..

As a result of the new forms of media, the importance of the political parties is the opposite of what it used to. The focus now lies primarily on individuals and their personal political communication, exercised both through traditional means and social networks. The party in itself is the outcome of the person, of the personality-based, emotional leadership that summons followers.

Another telling case is that of Bolsonaro, who chose “More Brazil, less Brasília” as his campaign slogan even though he had represented Brasília in the Brazilian Congres for about 28 years, and despite the fact that this is where his sons have also held positions of power, be it as congressman (Eduardo), senator (Flavio) or city councillor (Carlos). But in the communicational logic of the far-right, such contradictions do not matter: only the construction of a plausible narrative is important; one that connects with broad segments of the population that repudiate and resent the traditional political class—be it as a result of corruption scandals, lack of economic performance, or other issues.

In France, young Jordan Bardella forged this closeness around the social platform Tik-Tok, and another case worth mentioning is that of Spain’s “Se Acabó la Fiesta”, by YouTuber Alvise Pérez. The policy proposals of this new personality-based political party lie to the right of VOX’s, causing sensation during the last European elections. In tune with the prevailing zeitgeist, Alvise Pérez vowed to jail Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez whilst delivering a discourse similar to Milei’s, speaking of a “caste” and echoing the distrust of politics that corrodes contemporary societies. Se Acabó la Fiesta, though, is but one example of how the political profitability of far-right parties and movements leads to the emergence of new players, competing with the “initial” political forces for the same extremist camp. Other examples of these “second generation” far-right parties include Éric Zemmour and Marion Marechal Le Pen’s Reconquête! in France, Konfederacja in Poland, My Hazánk in Hungary.

The emergence of new factions within the European Parliament mirrors this internal competition within the far-right. Illustrating this we see the emergence of the new “Patriots” group—led by Victor Orbán and including VOX—to the detriment of the traditional parliamentary alliance uniting the party of Georgia Meloni and Poland’s Law & Justice, Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). This also shows the decline of the other traditional group of the European far-right, Identity and Democracy (ID).

According to Traverso’s definition of “post-fascism” [7][7] Traverso, E. (2018). Las nuevas caras de la derecha [The new faces of the right]. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI., the far-right and its modus operandi in social media pursue the symbolic annihilation of the enemy, and not necessarily violent annihilation. However, there can be and indeed have been outright violent incidents, such as the assault on the US Capitol (2021) and the attack on the Praça dos Três Poderes in Brasília (2023). For this reason, the Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde, an expert in the study of far-right movements, has moved in recent years from clearly differentiating the “radical populist right” and the “extreme right” to pointing out that we are currently moving towards a process of hybridisation between the two [8][8] Mudde, C. (2019). The far right today. John Wiley & Sons..

Ultimately, what’s at stake is the rationalist utopia that guaranteed more democratic rights, shattered by the mass irrationality of social media and new technologies.

The Global Far-Right is Religious

Faced with the collapse of Modernity’s certitudes, the far-right finds ways to reassert its political, social and cultural legitimacy through religious calls and experiences. It uses a type of appeal known as “religious hybridisation” [9][9] Veiga, E. (2021): “Pastora Remi Bencke: Bolsonaro sabe jogar muito bem com a religiao” [Pastor Remi Bencke: ’Bolsonaro knows how to play well with religion’], Deutsche Welle, 29.01., which combines the most conservative features of the three main Western religions: aiming for a common cause in defence of the “traditional family”, it can embrace the orthodox branches of Judaism and the conservative branches of Catholicism and Evangelicalism.

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The global far-right is unequivocally religious, in so far as religion is one of its main pillars. Looking at their main political experiences, one can note how they all draw upon this religious matrix. This includes Brazil with Jair Bolsonaro, Israel with Benjamin Netanyahu, Poland with the Kaczyński brothers and the Law and Justice party, Hungary with Victor Orbán, India with Narendra Modi, Argentina with Javier Milei and the United States with Donald Trump.

In this sense, rabbis, evangelical pastors, and priests act as “intermediaries” [10][10] Rein, R. (2008). Los hombres detrás del Hombre: la segunda línea de liderazgo peronista [The men behind the Man: the second line of Peronist leadership]. Araucaria, 10(19). and provide outsider leaders with the political structure that they lack through their churches and temples. They lack this structure precisely because most come from outside traditional politics, an aspect linked to the recent irruption of far-right politics.

This coincides, as José Benegas pointed out, with a period of human history in which sexual abuses perpetrated by religious hierarchies have become more widely reported than ever before. It is therefore not surprising that the financing of far-right movements by sectors involved in these abuses. With their presence and political participation, they seek to redirect attention elsewhere. The film Sounds of Freedom, for example, produced by the Mexican Eduardo Verástegui, tells the story of an ex-CIA agent who participated in meetings such as CPAC Mexico and seeks to redirect blame with conspiracy theories towards “the Hollywood elite”.

In a world mired by uncertainties and hegemonic crises, marked by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Russia-Ukraine war, the decline of the United States and the rise of China, religion becomes alluring insofar as it offers a source of order and social reinforcement of hierarchies. In other words, in this “age of uncertainties” marked by technological shift, religion can be a tempting refuge for alienated segments of society.

Especially because it provides moral and political support for “crusades” between the “pure” and the “impure”. That is, for the anti-democratic narratives that far-right leaders often adopt, installing a polarising and confrontational ethos in the societies they govern.

Israel as a Source of Legitimacy for the Global Far-Right

If there is one single issue where the global far-right converges, that is Israel. Adhering to the Israeli state enables it to accuse the left of “anti-Semitism”, and promotes a conservative appropriation of the Holocaust. That is, by de-obscuring and trying to revert the relationship between fascism, post-fascism and the systematic annihilation of people in concentration camps in the 20th century, together with the fact that the current extreme right-wing forces are heirs to those experiences. With this attempt at disassociation comes the conspiracy theory spread by far-right circles that Hitler would have been a leftist, as the word “socialist” appears in the name of the Nazi party—the German National Socialist Party.

Thus, the far-right is not only seeking to reverse judgement and hold the left responsible for anti-Semitism and discrimination against Jews; it is also trying to break the historical link whereby it was fascist, right-wing nationalist and conservative forces that brought about the warlike and imperialist policies of the Second World War, as well as support for Hitler and Mussolini. For instance, without the complicity of right-wing conservative figures in the Weimar Republic such as Franz von Papen and Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler would not have come to power.

As authors such as Enzo Traverso and Leon Rozitchner have acutely pointed out, whereas the Jew once represented the “otherness” of the Western world, today he is a key gear for the continuation of colonialism: “Because of Israeli policy, the Jew has become an embodiment of the West; hence the opposite of the old anti-Semitism, which saw him as an enemy of the Western nations” [11][11] Traverso, E. (2018). Las nuevas caras de la derecha [The new faces of the right]. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI..

This are the same spurious and systematic accusations of anti-Semitism that Jeremy Corbyn had to face while leading the British Labour Party with radical left-wing politics. In contrast, far-right VOX and Rassemblement National, whild hosting proven anti-Semites in their ranks, seem to have the legitimacy and support of Israel, with officials having openly participated in their rallies.

The emergence of the religious nationalist movement in Israel, which has strong support within the Netanyahu cabinet, has helped to cement such alliances. Netanyahu’s links with the so-called Visegrad group, countries that have made anti-Semitism an undeniable fuel for their far-right governments, are a testament to this.

And this is because

“for the prime minister (Netanyahu), the left is always the enemy within, for they accept the idea that the Palestinian people have rights. It is—he wrote—the symptom of a disease contracted at the turn of the century in Eastern Europe. The virus of Marxism that has permeated all Jewish, socialist, communist and left-wing movements since the beginning of the 20th century.” [12][12] Enderlin, C. (2021): “Las figuras de la derecha israelí” [Israeli right-wing figures], Le Monde Diplomatique Cono Sur, Edición 263, mayo.

The irony of this phenomenon is that, in cases like Spain’s, nationalist fascist-Catholic forces were outspokenly anti-Semitic during the 20th century, while today VOX—heir to those political traditions—presents its alliance with Netanyahu’s regime as one of its main virtues.

The Far-Right is Not Invincible

One of the prevailing narratives we face is that the far-right is “invincible” in that it is the result of a kind of subjectivity. As if it were the offspring a zeitgeist and a series of economic shifts unfavourable to the left, an indisputablly ideal breeding ground for the triumph of far-right movements in their different expressions.

While the far-right has undoubtedly expanded in the last few years, recent experiences have proven that it can be defeated in coalitions ranging from the centre to the left. Pedro Sánchez in Spain (2024), the New Popular Front in France (2024), Lula in Brazil (2022), and Joe Biden in the United States (2020) have all shown that the far-right in power, or on the verge of power, can be defeated at the ballots.

Of course, this is a challenging situation for democratic forces, as the far-right regularly resorts to symbolic or physical violence as a means of building power, disregarding electoral results when unfavourable to them and concocting conspiracy theories. But the bid to produce an alliance linked to the experience of the “popular fronts” of the 20th century—the period in which they were established to fight fascism—is yielding encouraging results.

There is also a need for tangible measures capable of inspiring the most neglected segments of the population, who in recent decades—in line with the process of social alienation—have moved from voting for the communist parties to voting for the far-right. It is no coincidence that East Germany, Hungary and Poland, where “real socialism” ruled for decades, have all been fertile breeding electoral grounds for the far-right. These trends are the result of a process of social disaffiliation fololowed by the reconstruction of a sense of “community” in a conservative vein led by far-right movements.

As for social media, numerous academic studies have shown that their very communications structure tends to favour the far-right; but that does not mean the left shouldn’t try to counteract their narratives there. The experience of the so-called “cultural Janonismo” in Brazil and the PT’s 2022 campaign, with influencers such as Felipe Neto and André Janones, was instrumental in defeating bolsonarismo. This implies stepping into the quagmire of fake news but, conversely, mud has been part of any political campaign and power struggle since long before the emergence of social networks. What they have done is only to accelerate, connect and massify trends that were already present in previous communication systems—such as radio, press and television. These media already enabled sophisticated techniques of propaganda and mass manipulation, and they were widely used by political leaders of the far-right or other political trends, especially during the 20th century.

Nor should we lose sight of the fact that, when far-right forces have engaged in overtly violent actions to destroy democratic institutions—such as the aforementioned attacks on the US Capitol and the Plaza de los Praça dos Três Poderes Brasília—they have done so as a last resort, following their electoral defeat. And nonetheless in those cases where they resorted to violence by fanatical groups, they eventually had to leave the executive branch.

Another cause for optimism is that, in Europe, the emergence of extreme right-wing parties such as the Rassemblement National or the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), as well as the lessons previous experiences of fascism, have made it possible to establish “cordons sanitaires” in different countries that seem to have been quite effective. Even in Spain, where the centre-right’s PP has avoided a full-fledged alliance with VOX since its emergence, trying two different strategies: on the one hand, trying to absorb their voter base by mimicking their discourse, something exemplified in Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s formula “Communism or Freedom”. On the other, differentiating itself from VOX by establishing just a few regional alliances with them, showcasing the far-right party’s resentment against them, to the point they accused them of being “the cowardly little right-wing”.

In Latin America, by contrast, there has never been such cordon sanitaire: candidates emerging from outside the traditional party structure (Bolsonaro, Kast and Milei) have colonised the traditional right, which has played a pitiful role in forgetting its discourses upholding institutions in pursuit of an opportunistic quest for power. Such political outsiders have completely renounced the ethics of their convictions and are not up to the responsibilities that the task demands of them. In this context in which the centre is losing its identity to the extremes, the way to avoid further damage is for the centre-right not to legitimise the discourses of the extreme right, nor to enter into opportunistic alliances with these forces.

In this sense, there are two models in the fight against the far-right, as utlined by Mudde. On the one hand, there is the German model of “militant democracy”, which argues—in line with the post-WWII context from which it emerged—that the defence of democracy is a permanent exercise, a “fight” that cannot be neglected. On the other hand, there is the American model, which champions unrestricted “freedom of expression” as an inalienable principle.

In light of the results in both countries—now Trump may be elected once again, despite the anti-democratic and coup-like attack on the Capitol in 2021—it would seem that a more interventionist model in the face of extremism is more effective than one that, under an unrestricted and naïve interpretation of freedom of expression, allows the flow of toxic and seductive discourse into public debate.

To this we must add the empirical evidence provided by the Brazilian case, where the intervention of the Federal Supreme Court Minister Alexandre de Moraes, combating disinformation and calls for violence and terrorism on the part of the far-right, was vital in preserving democracy. The support of various sectors of the political class for his initiatives was also fundamental in preventing further authoritarian action by Bolsonarism after its electoral defeat.

Wherever it exercises its rule, the far-right seeks a hybrid regime that blends democracy and authoritarianism. Victor Orbán’s Hungary, with its rigged gerrymandering laws, a Supreme Court appointed on the basis of ideological affinity with the Executive, the eviction of universities such as the Central European University, as well as state and private media that broadcast government propaganda, are also an example of what Alain Rouquié has called “hegemonic democracies” [13][13] Rouquié, A. (2017). El siglo de Perón: ensayo sobre las democracias hegemónicas [Perón’s Century: An Essay on Hegemonic Democracies]. Edhasa.. A model that has been endorsed by the Bolsonaros in Brazil—who have forged permanent ties with Hungary—as well as by sympathisers of La Libertad Avanza in Argentina.

The longer it remains in power, the more the far-right will be empowered to advance in its process of de-democratisation, with the ultimate goal of taking power away from the people and giving it to government-aligned and power-addicted elites. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is a demonstration of how a new electoral victory for leaders like Trump could deepen this anti-democratic and elitist concentration towards authoritarianism.

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