Over the past decade, European Far Right Parties (EFRPs)1 have grown drastically. They have gone from fringe and marginalised political jesters to some of the largest parliamentary opposition forces all over the European Union.
In France, RN holds the largest number of seats in the National Assembly. In Germany’s Bundestag, the AfD is ahead of the SPD, making it the second-largest party in the German chamber and the strongest opposition party. In the United Kingdom, open polls show Reform UK is, in fact, ahead of the ruling party. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and her nationalist allies have governed for 3 years. In Austria, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Poland, the far right’s shadow is ever-looming.
Many blame the right’s rising popularity on immigration. Others blame the failure of the mainstream factions in dealing with everyday fundamental issues such as housing, inflation, and wage stagnation. 
The true culprit of the far right’s popularity could be much simpler and more boring than these social concerns, though: Misinformation. More specifically, a very real threat in the EU political theatre – Information Warfare.
Yes, immigration is an issue that must be addressed and not ignored, as centre-left and centre-right parties have insisted on doing. But, by spreading conspiracy theories, fake stories and “ragebait” (the act of lying or being purposely misleading to induce outrage, and particularly in the case of social media, engagement), EFRPs have painted this particular problem as an existential threat to European ontological security, actively contributing to a lack of serious debate of the issue.
While EFRPs accuse other parties of spreading lies and misinformation, they themselves consistently spread misinformation and blow social issues out of proportion. Due to the sensational and emotional appeal of populist rhetoric among the Far Right, populist voters tend to fall more easily for misinformation as well.
What should have been a calculated and critical response to migration as a problem of equal urgency as many other issues often ignored by nationalists has now become the centrepiece for a propaganda maxim.
This apparent “emergency” on issues such as migration can be attributed to EFRPs tending to make a much more agile, but also scofflaw use of information tools such as social media.
For instance, Portugal’s Chega party has more followers on TikTok and Instagram than any other in the country, and it’s not even a close race. Similarly, Germany’s AfD has more followers on Instagram than SPD or CDU/CSU put together. Incidentally, both Chega and AfD are known for their unhinged use of AI imagery and spread of fake or exaggerated news stories to induce engagement and ragebait. Romania’s Calin Georgescu has also ridden a wave of TikTok-based propaganda, causing the popularity of the presidential candidate to soar.
These trends are consistent among far right parties in general. It’s no coincidence that much of the online support for far right movements is typically is dominated by fake accounts, bots or AI imagery depicting exaggerated or false scenarios (as seen in the US, Germany, Portugal, Romania and the European Parliament).
What’s more, Donald Trump’s election and subsequent administration has begun a process of normalisation of a willy-nilly approach to information. In other words, lying has become acceptable as members from the Trump government will often make false or unsubstantiated claims, including himself, his Secretary of Health, Musk as head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and more.
Misinformation, especially through AI and bogus campaigns, has never been easier, more powerful, more proficient and more dangerous, and the far right uses and abuses this fact. As a consequence, free speech has become sacred; that is, the free speech that Trump and his tech giant soldiers, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, can agree with.
By contrast, posts on Twitter/X about any topics sympathetic to LGBT+ rights are now actively being removed, while protection against discrimination of queer groups being culled. Similarly, Meta’s Facebook has now silently started removing mechanisms that fight discrimination against posts in support of the LGBT+ community.
This misinformation machine has generated a cycle of normalisation: so prominent is the spread of fake or exaggerated news that the far right gains support even among influential elites, such as Musk, Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg, which then push it onto their followers or users of their products.
As a consequence of this radicalisation of mainstream discourse, politically and racially motivated violence has seen an upswing. The normalisation of extremist views has caused a rise in violence in Europe, in the forms of vandalism or hate crimes, with extreme right wing supporters being more likely than any other political groups to engage in aggressive and hostile actions. EFRPs tend to downplay such acts and refuse to acknowledge or condemn them.
This has led to a growth of far right terrorism as well, stemming from hostility towards racial and religious minorities, as well as towards women. More to the point, we are witnessing a growing and concerning normalisation of toxically traditionalist values, even among teenagers and young adults.
Indeed, the role social media plays in aggressively spreading nationalist and misogynistic propaganda has consequences due to Gen Z’s and Gen Alpha’s exposure to social media. Boys and young men especially are becoming more and more extreme in their views of society. Women tend to lean more towards progressivism and left-leaning ideologies, but there are exceptions.
Research by the European Democracy Hub shows us that when the far right reaches government, its rhetoric and its policies portray men of the dominant ethnicity as victims of a system that unfairly affords women and minorities many privileges.
As a consequence, they often aim to erase or reduce compensatory rights for minority and women, such as quotas and certain protections. This has fostered the spread of a performative, toxic macho culture that has gone beyond mere personal views and become politically accepted.
The far right we see today is a transformational wave of political culture. It is not really comparable to traditional and mainstream right-wing parties such as Christian democrats or neoliberals – it promotes an unrealistic, performative stoicism and accepts violence as a potential solution.
It exaggerates social issues to the point they will appear as existential threats to European’s ontological security, and then promises itself as the single solution that will at last be successful.
Because of this, it is the Far Right – and not any of the issues it claims to be the solution to – that is the real emergency. EFRPs will typically blame the left and the centre blocs for their rise; they will also complain and demand to know why the far left does not get as much attention as they do.
It compares environmental activism, peaceful protests, and public support for minorities to their own extremism, only to then respond with whataboutism whenever its hostile approach to discourse is addressed.
But there is nothing comparable to the threat the Far Right poses to Europe. EFRPs are ripe with anti-European sentiment, with intolerance, moral corruption, and dishonesty. They will soften their rhetoric and their views when they detect their sensationalist populism has scooped up every ignorant, desperate or easily seduced voter it can, so that they can move on to centrist voters.
There is no appeasing or accommodating the Far Right, because even when parties address the issues that make them popular, it rises even more.
So, what can be done to return to normality, that is, politics without extremes making up large swaths of national parliaments?
The problem is believing in political normality; it is a woeful mirage. Parties, policy, and lawmakers must be fluid and dynamic in their approaches; they must keep up with the times and adapt to issues, not ignore them.
A vote for the Far Right is the consequence of two factors: 1) frustration with the status quo, and 2) genuine nationalist beliefs regardless of the sociopolitical situation.
But blaming “protest votes” or “true nationalism” only goes so far; this popularity stems from the mainstream parties’ apathy towards the evolution of Information Warfare, which establishes EFRPs as a viable solution despite their glaringly derisory ways of doing politics.
Wherever they have sprung up and spread misinformation, thereby making nationalism and unhinged political rhetoric acceptable, the left and the mainstream right have not responded with critical debunking and convincing reasonability.
The response to extremism cannot simply come from tackling the issues extremism claims to be able to magically solve. This strand of political approaches will undoubtedly find new problems to use as flagship fake emergencies, even if current ones are resolved.
Defeating extremism is about proving how truly pathetic it is through calculated dialogue and debate, thereby showing voters how politically incapable those they want in power truly are. It is about surgically reminding voters that the EU, as a groundbreaking political project, was built to fight extremism, and can only flourish without it.
- This abbreviation is used for the purpose of this article and not in reference to an academically defined term such as “EFRP.” ↩︎
