Researching and understanding far-right politics in times of mainstreaming

Contemporary research on far-right politics has relied predominantly on the use of binaries between the ‘far/extreme/(populist) radical right’ and the so-called ‘mainstream’, and a ‘waves’ metaphor to historicise different eras of the post-World War Two far-right. In this article, we probe these categories and binaries, problematising hegemonic depictions, the consequent assumptions underpinning them, and what this means for resistance to reactionary politics. By reflecting on the current state of the field, summarising dominant approaches and their potential limitations, we arrive at our key contribution: a revised definition of the term ‘far right’ which shifts the focus away from categorisation towards an understanding of far-right politics as a political position. In turn, our approach also presents both a challenge to and evolution of the ‘waves’ metaphor which accounts for processes of mainstreaming and rests on a critical account of the mainstream itself. Our conceptualisation problematises traditional binaries while pointing to a ‘fifth wave’ of far-right politics in which the identities of the mainstream and far right are mutually constitutive. To illustrate our conceptual contribution, we conclude our article with a case study on the interaction between the far right and mainstream in UK politics.