What Is ‘Far Right,’ Anyway?
11th June 2024
On Monday, Americans and Britons woke up to media reports about the surge of the “far right” in Europe. The news, according to Anglophone media, was especially bad in France, where the “far right” walloped President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition so thoroughly that Macron felt compelled to call snap elections.
English speakers could be forgiven for panicking over fear that a Franco-fascist skunk called Pepe Le Pétain had come to stink up the Republic, and herald the odiferous return of Vichy. After all, what else could “far right” mean?
After this weekend’s vote, it should be clear that “far right” is a term that says more about the biases of the person using it than it does about the person or party to whom it is applied.