According to a 2012 Pew Research Center survey, Christianity will remain the world's largest religion
throughout the next four decades. However, Christianity may experience
the largest net losses in terms of religious conversion, according to
expectations. Worldwide, religious conversions are projected to have a
"modest impact on changes in the Christian population" between 2010 and
2050 and may negatively affect the growth of the Christian population and its share of the world's population "slightly". However, these forecasts lack reliable data on religious conversion in
China, but according to media reports and expert assessments, it is
possible that the rapid growth of Christianity in China may maintain, or even increase, the current numerical advantage of Christianity as the largest religion in the world. In the United States, there have been some conversions to Christianity among those who grew up non-religious,
but they have not been in numbers that make up for those who were
raised as Christians but became religiously unaffiliated later in their
lives. According to a Pew
study in 2020, among adults aged 18 to 54 in 117 countries, 83% of
those who were raised Christian remain Christian. The remaining 17% now
identify as non-Christian, and the vast majority of former Christians no
longer identify with any religion.
Scholars have proposed that church institutions decline in power
and prominence in most industrialized societies, except in cases in
which religion serves some function in society beyond merely regulating
the relationship between individuals and God. Developing countries in Latin America and Africa are not experiencing a decline, mostly because of religious conversion in those countries where the church offers broad social support services. Together with the decline of Western Christians, increasing numbers of Christians in the Global South will form a "new Christendom" in which the majority of the world's Christian population will be found in the South. According to various scholars and sources, Pentecostalism – a Protestant Christianmovement – is the fastest-growing religion in the world; this growth is primarily due to religious conversion.
The European Values Study found that in most European countries in 2008, the majority of young respondents identified themselves as Christians. Unlike Western Europe, in Central and Eastern European countries, the proportion of Christians has either been stable or it has increased in the post-communist era. A large majority (83%) of those who were raised as Christians in
Western Europe still identify as such. The remainder mostly
self-identify as religiously unaffiliated. Christianity is still the largest religion in Western Europe, where 71% of Western Europeans identified themselves as Christian, according to a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center.
A 2015 analysis of the European Values Study in the Handbook of Children and Youth Studies identified a "dramatic decline" in religious affiliation across Europe from 1981 to 2008; however, according to the same analysis, "the majority of young
respondents in Europe claimed that they belonged to a Christian
denomination".
In 2017, a report which was released by St. Mary's University, London,
concluded that Christianity "as a norm" was gone for at least the
foreseeable future. In at least 12 out of the 29 European countries
which were surveyed by the researchers, based on a sample of 629 people,
the majority of young adults reported that they were not religious. The data was obtained from two questions, one asking, "Do you consider
yourself as belonging to any particular religion or denomination?" to
the full sample and the other one asking "Which one?" to the sample who
replied with "Yes". The Pew Research Center
criticized the methodology of the two-step approach: "Presumably, this
is because some respondents who are relatively low in religious practice
or belief would answer the first question by saying that they have no
religion, while the same respondents would identify as Christian,
Muslim, Jewish, etc., if presented with a list of religions and asked to
choose among them. The impact of these differences in question wording
and format may vary considerably from country to country".
In 2018, the Pope lamented the ongoing trend of repurposing churches: some of them were being used as pizza
joints, skating parks, strip clubs and bars. In Germany, 500 Catholic
churches have closed since 2000. Canada has lost 20% of its churches in
this time frame. This is the result of a lack of clergy who are willing
to staff churches as well as the result of the churches' inability to
meet costs. After a scandal in Naples where a deconsecrated church became the venue for a Halloween party which featured scantily clad witches who were seated on the former altar, Pope Francis,
acknowledging the decline in Church attendance, implored that the
deconsecrated churches be placed in service to fulfill the social needs
of caring for the poor.
In a new study published in 2022, Pew Research Center projects
that if the rate of switching continues to accelerate (primarily to no
religious affiliation), Christians will make up less than half of the
American population by 2070, with estimated ranges for that year falling
between 35% and 46% of the American population (down from 64% in 2022
and down from 91% in 1976). The same study found a retention rate among American Christians closer
to 67%, with one-third of those who were Christian in childhood leaving
the religion by age 30. As of 2024, Christianity's decline in the United States may have leveled off or slowed, according to the Pew Research Center and Gallup. In 2024, about 73% of Americans raised Christian still identify as
Christian, while 27% are no longer Christian. Most former Christians
describe themselves religiously as atheists, agnostics or nothing in particular.
After years of steep decline, Christian affiliation across much of the Western world has leveled off. In the United States,
for example, studies reports that since around 2020 the share of adults
identifying as Christian has steadied at roughly 62 percent. Among
Generation Z, the reversal is even clearer: church membership climbed
from 45 percent to 51 percent between 2023 and 2024, while the
proportion of religiously unaffiliated "nones" slipped from 45 percent
to 41 percent. A similar pattern is evident in Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, where studies report that church attendance is rising among young
people—particularly young men—and that Christian self-identification has
stabilized.
Reports also note that young men are converting in notable
numbers to what they see as more "masculine expressions" of
Christianity, such as the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, confessional branches of Evangelical Lutheranism and traditionalist branches of Catholicism. While exact figures are difficult to verify, Pew Research Center data
indicate that the Orthodox Christian population is now about 64% male,
up from 46% in 2007, suggesting a marked demographic shift toward men
within these communities. Congregations of Conservative Anabaptist
denominations have experienced continued growth, with Conservative
Anabaptists having "large families and high retention rates".
In Western countries with large enough Christian samples to
analyze, most people who currently identify as Christian were also
raised Christian. However, in other regions, a significant share of
those who call themselves Christian were not brought up in the faith.
Notably, in countries such as Singapore, South Korea, and Sri Lanka, Christian accession rates exceed 10%. In Singapore in particular, nearly half of Christians (47%) say they were raised outside of Christianity.
Europe
Largest (non-)religious group by EU member state according to Eurobarometer survey 2019.
More than 75% Catholic
50–75% Catholic
Relative Catholic majority
50–75% Protestant
More than 75% Orthodox
50–75% non-religious
Relative non-religious majority
30% Catholic, 30% non-religious (Germany)
According to scholars, in 2017, Europe's population was 77.8% Christian (up from 74.9% in 1970).[48] These changes were largely the result of the collapse of Communism and conversions to Christianity in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries. According to the 2021 Eurobarometer survey, Christianity was the largest religion in the European Union, accounting for 66.1% of the EU population, down from 72% in 2012.
In 2017, Pew Research Center found that the number of Christians
in Europe is in decline. This is mainly because the number of deaths is
estimated to exceed the number of births among European Christians, in
addition to lower fertility rates and switching to no religious
affiliation.
In 2018, Pew Research Center found a retention rate among Western
European Christians of around 83% (ranging from 57% in the Netherlands
to 91% in Austria). Despite the decline in Christian affiliation in Western Europe, Christianity is still the largest religion in Western Europe, where 71% of Western Europeans identified themselves as Christian, according to a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center. Unlike Western Europe, in Central and Eastern European countries the proportion of Christians has been stable or even increased in the post-communist era.
The decline of Christianity in the Czech Republic recorded throughout the censuses of 1991, 2001 and 2011.
In Western Europe, Christians have relatively low retention rates in
the Netherlands (57%), Norway (62%), Belgium and Sweden (65%); the
majority of those who have left Christianity in these countries now
identify as religiously unaffiliated. Meanwhile, Christians have relatively high retention rates in Austria
(91%), Switzerland and Italy (90%), and Ireland and the United Kingdom
(89%). The proportion of respondents who currently identify as Christian has
been in decline in Czechia and Slovakia; meanwhile, the proportion of
respondents who currently identify as Christian has been stable or even
increased in the rest of the Central and Eastern European countries.
In Austria, between 1971 and 2021, Christianity declined from 93.8%
to 68.2% (Catholicism from 87.4% to 55.2% and Protestantism from 6% to
3.8%) while people with no religion rose from 4.3% to 22.4%. According to the 2021 national survey conducted by Statistics Austria,
among Christians, 80.9% were Catholics, 7.2% were Orthodox Christians,
5.6% were Protestants, while remaining 6.2% were Christians, belonging
to other denominations of the religion or not affiliated with any
denomination, and 22.4% declared they did not belong to any religion,
denomination or religious community.
In absolute terms, the Catholic Church
lists about 4.7–4.8 million members in 2022 (50–52% of the population).
In 2022. 90,808 Austrians formally left the Catholic Church in 2022 and
85,163 left in 2023. Between 2019 and 2023, Catholic baptisms and Catholic Weddings decreased from over 45,000 to ~39,000 and ~11,000 to ~8,000 respectively. A survey shows roughly 322–348 thousand attended Sunday Mass in 2023, down from over 500,000 in pre-pandemic attendance trends. The Catholic bishops cite "unfavorable ratio between baptisms and deaths" as the key driver for this change.
Self-identification with Christianity has been steadily declining in Finland. In 2025, 62.2% of Finns counted themselves as belonging to a Christian church, compared with 86.2% in 2000.
The number of church members leaving the Church saw a
particularly large increase during the fall of 2010. This was caused by
statements regarding homosexuality and same-sex marriage – perceived to
be intolerant towards LGBT people – made by a conservative bishop and a politician representing Christian Democrats in a TV debate on the subject.
Christianity has been declining in France
steadily since the 1960s. In 2021, a French poll showed that over half
of French citizens do not believe in God or consider Christianity to be
irrelevant. People who identified as Catholic declined from 81% in 1986
to 47% in 2020, while the number of people who identified as not
religious rose from 16% to 40%. In 2021, around 50% of all French respondents identified as Christians.
In 2024, it was estimated that about 48% of the German population
were Christians. About 45% were members of the two large Christian
churches. Attendance and membership in both Catholic and Protestant churches in Germany
have been declining for several decades. In 2021, for the first time,
fewer than half of German citizens belonged to the two larger churches.
According to some sources, Christianity is declining in Hungary.
Between 1992 and 2022, Christianity declined from 92.9% to 42.5%
(Catholicism from 67.8% to 29.2%). In 2022, only 35.5% of people with
age group 30-39 identified as Christians, the number further dropping to
32.8% of people with age group 20–29. Among Catholics, only 12% regularly attend church. On the other hand, a series of surveys conducted by Pew Research Center
in 2018 found that the share of Christians has remained fairly stable
in Hungary (75% who say they were raised Christian versus 76% who say
they are Christian now).
Catholicism remains the predominant religion in the Republic of Ireland. In the 2022 census, 75.7% of the population identified as Christian. However, recent social changes, including the lifting of a ban on abortion and the legalizing of same-sex marriage,
have accelerated a shift toward more secular or liberal attitudes in
Ireland, particularly within younger demographics. This increased
secularization is exemplified when comparing mass attendance, weekly
Mass attendance stood at 81% in 1990; this dropped to 48% by 2006. This process is characterized by scholars as a move toward a
"Post-Catholic" state, i.e. one from where traditional Catholicism,
which held a "monopoly on the Irish religious market" and had a strong
relationship with state power, is being displaced.
An Irish priest, Fr. Kevin Hegarty, asserted in 2018 that the church's authority was undermined by the papal encyclical, called Humanae Vitae, that established the Church's opposition to contraception. He reported that there is only one priest under the age of 40 in the entire diocese of Killala;
only two priests have been ordained over the last 17 years, and there
have been no candidates for the priesthood since 2013. Hegarty blames
this decline on the Church's positions on female ordination, contraception and sexuality. A continued requirement for children entering Irish Catholic-owned
schools to be baptized keeps the overall level of baptisms high, though
the number of individuals practicing a faith or attending church is
decreasing.
Problems arising from the sexual abuse of children
and the historical persecution of single mothers and their families
have also greatly contributed to the decline of Catholicism in Ireland. The clerical scandals and the poor handling of them damaged the Churches credibility.
Church converted into Belgian Beer Cafe in Utrecht, Netherlands.
The Netherlands has tolerated greater religious diversity among
Christian sects than Scandinavian countries, where "automatism" (default
registration in the Lutheran Church
by birth) has been the norm. Non-denominationalism increased in the
Netherlands during the 19th century. This process slowed between the
1930s and 1960s, after which non-denominational affiliation increased.
The Church's ministry to the poor was not needed in the modern
Netherlands that had developed systems of government welfare and secular
charity. The declining influence of religious institutions in public
life allowed great religious, philosophical and theological pluralism in
the private and individual spheres of Dutch society. During the 1960s and 1970s, pillarization
weakened as people became less religious. In 1971, 39% of the Dutch
population were Roman Catholics; by 2014, its share of the population
had dropped to 23.3% (church-reported KASKI data), or 23.7% (large
sample survey by Statistics Netherlands in 2015). The proportion of
adherents of Calvinism and Methodism declined in the same period from
31% to 15.5%.
In 2015, Statistics Netherlands,
the government institute that gathers statistical information about the
Netherlands, found that Christians made up 43.8% of the total
population. With only 49.9% of the Dutch in 2015 adhering to a religion, the Netherlands is one of the least religious countries of the European Union,
after the Czech Republic and Estonia. By the 1980s, religion had
largely lost its influence on Dutch politics, and as a result, Dutch
policy on women's rights, abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality and
prostitution became very liberal in the 1980s and 1990s. Subsequently,
the two major strands of Calvinism, the Dutch Reformed Church and the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands and a small Lutheran group, began to cooperate as the Samen op weg Kerken ('Together on the road churches'). In 2004, these churches merged to form the Protestant Church in the Netherlands.
In 2015, an opinion survey found that 63% of Dutch people thought that religion did more harm than good. A quarter of the people thought that morality would be threatened if no
one believed in God, down from 40% in 2006. The number of people
reporting that they never pray rose from 36% in 2006 to 53% in 2016. In 2015, Statistics Netherlands found that 50.1% of the adult population declared no religious affiliation.
In 2021 Polish census,
71.3% of Polish people identified as Catholic, although 20.53% refused
to answer the question about their religion. A 2022 poll showed that 84%
of Polish people identify as Catholic, but only 42% are practicing
Catholics, and among 18- to 24-year-olds only 23% are practicing
Catholics, compared to 69% in 1992. The Catholic sex abuse scandal and the large restrictions on abortions in Poland contributed to this decline in Catholicism among the younger generations.
Adherence to established forms of church-related worship is in rapid
decline in Italy and Spain, and Church authority on social, moral and
ethical issues has been reduced. Daily church attendance has declined, but Catholicism still remains the
predominant religion in Spain and Italy. However, according to the
Spanish Center for Sociological Research, 55.6% of Spaniards self-identified as Catholic in 2023, but only 18.3% claimed to be "practicing" Catholics.
In Italy, about 68% of participants in a 2023 poll by Ipsos self-identified as "Christians". However, although most of the population claims religious affiliations, according to the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) data, less than 19% of Italians have declared themselves to be practicing. While the
proportion of those who have never practiced a religion has doubled,
from 16% in 2001 to 31% in 2022.
Attendance at Anglican churches had begun to decline in the United Kingdom by the Edwardian era, with both membership in mainstream churches and attendance at Sunday schools declining. Infant baptism declined after World War II. In 2014, Archbishop of CanterburyRowan Williams stated that the UK had become a "post-Christian country". That same year, only 4.3% of the population participated in a Church of England (C of E) Christmas service. Nevertheless, around 60% of all respondents still identified as Christians in the 2011 Census.
The Roman Catholic Church
has witnessed the highest retention rate among all Christian
denominations. In 2015, 9.2% of the UK population was Catholic.
According to scholar Stephen Bullivant, based on the British Social Attitudes Survey and European Social Survey,
the decline in Anglicanism has slowed thanks to "the return of
patriotism and pride in Christianity", and the number of followers of
the Anglican Church has increased slightly by 2017. This growth, however, is still below that needed and is mainly from
African immigrants. Anglicanism has been majority African since 2001. In
2017, a report commissioned by the Christian group Hope Revolution
indicated that 21% of British youth identified as "active followers of
Jesus".
According to the 2018 British Social Attitudes Survey
(BSA), 33% of over-75s identified as C of E, while only 1% of people
aged 18−24 did so. The report stated that "Britain is becoming more
secular not because adults are losing their religion but because older
people with an attachment to the C of E and other Christian
denominations are gradually being replaced in the population by younger
unaffiliated people."
In the 2022 Scotland census, for the first time, a majority of
people stated that they did not identify with any religion—51.1%, up
from 36.7% in 2011. However, according to a report by Bible Society, among 18- to
24-year-olds in the UK has increased from 4% in 2018 to 16% in 2024,
sparking conversations about a revival in the UK, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.
A deconsecrated church in Australia, now in use as a restaurant.
Australia was a Christian majority nation, but lost the status between 2010-20s. The percentage of people belonging to some form of Christianity
decreased from 52.2% in the 2016 Census to 43.9% in the 2021 Census.
Meanwhile, those declaring that they had no religion increased from 30%
in the 2016 Census to 38.9% in the 2021 Census. In a 2017 survey of teenage Australians aged 13–18, 52% declared that
they had no religion, compared with 38% Christian, 3% Muslim, 2%
Buddhist and 1% Hindu.
In 2016 Census, the Pentecostal church was only form of Christianity to show growth, rising from 1.7% in 2011 to 2.1%. However, like other forms of Christianity, it also has declined in 2021 Census.
Trends in Religious Affiliation of New Zealand Across the Last Five Censuses (2001–2023).
In New Zealand, there has been a significant decrease in Christianity
and increase in the population declaring "No religious affiliation".
The reason for this is attributed to the decline in belief in
institutional religion and increase in secularism.
In the 1991 census, 20.2% of the New Zealand population followed "No religion". This share more than doubled over the next two decades, reaching 41.9%
in 2013 and rising further to 48.2% in 2018. By the 2023 Census, it had
climbed to 51.6%, surpassing the 50% mark for the first time. At the
same time, the Christian population declined from 47.65% in 2013 Census
to 37.31% in 2018 Census and finally 32.3% in 2023 Census. In the 2018
Census, the New Zealand population claiming "No religion" officially
overtook Christianity.
In 2008, Research by the Bible Society of New Zealand indicated
that only 15% of Christians attend church at least once a week, and 20%
attend at least once a month.
North America
Canada
Percentage of Christians per Canadian province or territory based on 2021 Census data
In 2021, Statistics Canada
found that only 68% of Canadians 15 years and older reported having a
religious affiliation, marking the first time the number had dipped
below 70% since StatCan began tracking religious affiliation in 1985. Christianity remains the largest religion in Canada; in the 2021 census, 53.3% of the population identified as Christians.
In Quebec, since the Quiet Revolution, over 500 churches (20% of the total) have been closed or converted for non-worship–based uses. In the 1950s, 95% of Quebec's population went to Mass; in the present day, that number is closer to 5%. Despite the decline in church attendance, Christianity remains the largest religion in Quebec, where 64.82% of people were Christians, according to 2021 census.
With the loss of Christianity's monopoly after having once been central and integral to Canadian culture and daily life, Canada has become a post-Christian and secular state.
Although Mexico is the second largest Catholic country in the world
in terms of members, Catholicism has been declining over the past 30
years, from 89.7% of the population in 1990 to 77.7% in 2020. The number
of Catholics in Mexico have decreased by 20.5% since 1950. In 2020, 8.1% of Mexicans did not identify with any religion.
The National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI)
reported that the number of evangelicals or Protestants rose from 4.9%
in 1990 to 5.2% in 2000, reaching 7.6% in 2010, and 11.7% in 2020. The Institute estimates that 20 million Mexicans are evangelical. More than 17 million Mexicans are Pentecostal and Charismatic. There 8 million Christians independent from denominations in Mexico.
Christianity, the largest religion in the United States, experienced a 20th-century high of 91% of the total population in 1976. This declined to 73.7% by 2016 and 64% in 2022. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) lost about 30% of its
congregation and closed 12.5% of its churches: the United Methodist
church lost 16.7% of its congregation and closed 10.2% of its churches.
The Presbyterian Church had the sharpest decline, losing over 40% of its congregation and 15.4% of its churches between 2000 and 2015. Infant baptism has also decreased; nationwide, Catholic baptisms declined by nearly 34%, and ELCA baptisms by over 40%. As of 2024, Christianity's decline may have leveled off or slowed, according to the Pew Research Center and Gallup, though according to the Public Religion Research Institute, it has continued to decline.
In a study published in 2022, Pew Research Center projected that
if the rate of decline continued to accelerate, Christians would make up
less than half of the American population by 2070, with estimated
ranges for that year falling between 35% and 46% of the American
population. In 2024, Pew Research Center published a study stating that the
percentage of American adults who identify as religiously unaffiliated,
known as "nones", numbered 28%, higher than Catholics at 23% and
Evangelical Protestants at 24%. However, Pew reported in 2025 that Christianity's decline has begun to
"slow…or level off." Some speculate that a revival of Christianity has
begun in the U.S.
In 2019, 65% of American adults described themselves as Christians. In 2020, 47% of Americans said that they belonged to a church, down
from 70% in 1999; this was the first time that a poll found less than
half of Americans belonging to a church. Nationwide Catholic membership increased between 2000 and 2017, but the
number of churches declined by nearly 11% and by 2019, the number of
Catholics decreased by 2 million people, dropping from 23% of the population to 21%. Since 1970, weekly church attendance among Catholics has dropped from
55% to 20%, the number of priests declined from 59,000 to 35,000 and the
number of people who left Catholicism increased from under 2 million in
1975 to over 30 million today.
In 2022, there were fewer than 42,000 nuns in the United States, a
76% decline over 50 years, with fewer than 1% of nuns under age 40. The Southern Baptist Convention
has experienced decline: between 2006 and 2020, it lost 2.3 million
members, representing a 14% decrease in membership during that period. The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod reported in 2021 that the denomination has been declining in membership. In 2020, the church reported approximately 1.8 million total baptized
members, a decline from its peak in 1971 when it reported nearly 2.8
million total baptized members.
The 2014 Religious Landscape Study found a large majority of
those who were raised as Christians in the United States still identify
as such (retention rate of 87.6% among those raised Christian), while
those who no longer identify as Christians mostly identify as
religiously unaffiliated. More recent studies have found a retention rate closer to 67%, with
one-third of those who were Christian in childhood leaving the religion
by age 30. The 2014 study found that 84% of all adults who were raised as historically Black Protestant continue to identify as such or identify now with different Christian denominations, Evangelical Protestant (81%), Mormon (76%), Catholic (75%), Orthodox Christian (73%), mainline Protestant (70%), and Jehovah's Witnesses (62%) continue to identify as such or identify now with different Christian denominations. Significant minorities of those raised in nearly all Christian denominational families now say they are unaffiliated, ranging from 13% among those raised historically Black Protestant to 35% of those raised Jehovah's Witnesses. A small minority of those raised in nearly all Christian denominational
families identify now with another faith, ranging from 3% among those
raised historically Black Protestant, Evangelical Protestant, Mormon,
Orthodox Christian, and Jehovah's Witnesses to 4% of those raised
Catholic and mainline Protestant. A 2022 Pew Research study found that 30% of Latinos in the United
States were religiously unaffiliated, and half of Latinos age 18–29 were
religiously unaffiliated.
Moderate and liberal denominations in the United States have been
closing down churches at a rate three or four times greater than the
number of new churches being consecrated. However, according to The Christian Century,
the rate of annual closures is approximately 1% and quite low relative
to other types of institutions. It has been asserted that of the
approximately 3,700 churches that close each year, up to half are
unsuccessful new churches. The more conservative evangelical denominations have also declined, representing 23% of the population in 2006 and 14% in 2020 according to the Public Religion Research Institute.
The Public Religion Research Institute's 2020 Census of American Religion showed that the overall decline of white Christians in America had slowed, stabilizing at around 44% of the population. It also showed that, contrary to expectations, white evangelicals had
continued to decline and that they were now outnumbered by white
mainline Protestants. Conversely, the Pew Research Center found in 2022 that the decline had continued to accelerate over the previous fifty years.
South America
Historically, South America was dominated by a 'Catholic monopoly', with the Roman Catholic Church
exercising strong influence over religious, social, and political life.
In recent decades, however, scholars have described the region's
religious landscape as having shifted toward a more competitive and
pluralistic 'religious marketplace'. While Christianity remains the dominant religion, the region has experienced a significant decline in the proportion of Catholics, a surge in Evangelical and Pentecostal movements, and a notable rise in the non-religious population.
Some scholars have described the Catholic Church
in this era as a kind of 'complacent monopolist' that depended heavily
on cultural traditions and legal protections, rather than putting much
effort into active evangelization to retain its followers. Between 1996 and 2013, the proportion of Catholics declined in most
South American countries, with the sharpest drops recorded in Uruguay.
Although, South America remains overwhelmingly Christian, people who say they have no religious affiliation (irreligion) has been growing noticeably, especially in the Southern Cone. Uruguay stands out as the most secular country in the region. Between 1996 and 2013 the share of irreligious people there rose from about 18% to 38%. Chile
has seen a similar trend. Researchers largely trace this shift to
younger generations being much less religious than their parents. Sociologists are divided over whether this is real secularization or simply people drifting away from institutional religion. Some argue that even as the official Church weakens, Christian religiosity and its worldview still shapes everyday life for many.
As of 2019, Catholicism in Argentina was around 63%, down from 76.5% in 2004.Irreligiosity grew from 12% to 19% in 9 years.
A 2019 survey made online by the Universidad de San Andrés showed
that 76% of Argentinians believed in God (a decrease from 91% in 2008),
44% believed in heaven, 32% believed in hell, around 29% prayed daily,
only 13% attended religious services weekly and about 24% considered
religion to be very important in their lives.
However, affiliation with Protestant churches is increasing, as of 2019, Protestantism in Argentina was around 15.3%, rose from 9% in 2004. While Pentecostal churches originally attracted mostly the lower class,
they show an increasing appeal to the urban middle class. Middle-class congregations develop a distinctive style of Pentecostalism, more adapted to society.
Cases of sexual abuse, attempts to hide information, and interference
in government affairs are suggested as the main causes of the decline
of Christianity in Chile. According to the public broadcaster TVN, the number of Chileans who declare themselves Catholics fell from 73% in 2008 to 45% in 2018. In addition, it is the Latin American country that has less trust (36%) in the Church throughout the region according to Latinobarómetro. 63% of the Chilean population profess some branch of Christianity, according to the Encuesta Nacional Bicentenario identifies as Christian, with an estimated 45% of Chileans declaring to be part of the Catholic Church and 18% of Pentecostal churches. 5% of the population adhere to other religion.
Attempts to restore the Roman Catholic Christian faith in Chile have failed. The Argentine newspaper Clarín reported that Pope Francis's State visit to Chile in 2018 "had been the worst in his five years of pontificate." After the papal visit, the crisis in the Chilean Catholic Church increased. According to the Bicentenario
survey, atheism has grown from 21% in 2018 to 32% in 2019 and then to
36% in 2020 and 37% in 2021. Despite the decline of Roman Catholic
Church, Pentecostalism still maintains the same percentage of adherents since 2012.
According to the 2025 Pew survey, Christianity ceased to be the
majority faith in the United Kingdom, Australia, France, and Uruguay,
where it had previously been the dominant religion.
Key to the far-right worldview is the notion of societal purity,
often invoking ideas of a homogeneous "national" or "ethnic" community.
This view generally promotes organicism, which perceives society as a unified, natural entity under threat from diversity or modern pluralism.
Far-right movements frequently target perceived threats to their
idealized community, whether ethnic, religious, or cultural, leading to anti-immigrant sentiments, welfare chauvinism, and, in extreme cases, political violence or oppression. According to political theorists, the far right appeals to those who
believe in maintaining strict cultural and ethnic divisions and a return
to traditional social hierarchies and values.
In practice, far-right movements differ widely by region and
historical context. In Western Europe, they have often focused on
anti-immigration and anti-globalism, while in Eastern Europe, strong anti-communist
rhetoric is more common. The United States has seen a unique evolution
of far-right movements that emphasize nativism and radical opposition to
an increasingly centralized federal government.
According to scholars Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg, the core of the far right's worldview is organicism,
the idea that society functions as a complete, organized and
homogeneous living being. Adapted to the community they wish to
constitute or reconstitute (whether based on ethnicity, nationality,
religion or race), the concept leads them to reject every form of universalism in favor of autophilia and alterophobia, or in other words the idealization of a "we" excluding a "they". The far right tends to absolutize differences between nations, races,
individuals or cultures since they disrupt their efforts towards the utopian
dream of the "closed" and naturally organized society, perceived as the
condition to ensure the rebirth of a community finally reconnected to
its quasi-eternal nature and re-established on firm metaphysical foundations.
As they view their community in a state of decay facilitated by
the ruling elites, far-right members portray themselves as a natural,
sane and alternative elite, with the redemptive mission of saving
society from its promised doom. They reject both their national
political system and the global geopolitical order (including their
institutions and values, e.g. political liberalism and egalitarianhumanism)
which are presented as needing to be abandoned or purged of their
impurities, so that the "redemptive community" can eventually leave the
current phase of liminal crisis to usher in the new era. The community itself is idealized through great archetypal figures (the Golden Age, the savior, decadence and global conspiracy theories) as they glorify non-rationalistic and non-materialistic values such as the youth or the cult of the dead.
The Encyclopedia of Politics: The Left and the Right states that
far-right politics include "persons or groups who hold extreme
nationalist, xenophobic, homophobic, racist, religious fundamentalist,
or other reactionary views". While the term far right is typically applied to fascists and neo-Nazis, it has also been used to refer to those to the right of mainstream right-wing politics.
Charles Maurras, founder and leader of Action Française, a far-right monarchist and ultranationalist political movement in France
According
to political scientist Lubomír Kopeček, "[t]he best working definition
of the contemporary far right may be the four-element combination of
nationalism, xenophobia, law and order, and welfare chauvinism proposed
for the Western European environment by Cas Mudde." Relying on those concepts, far-right politics includes yet is not limited to aspects of authoritarianism, anti-communism, and nativism. Claims that superior people should have greater rights than inferior
people are often associated with the far right, as they have
historically favored a social Darwinistic or elitist hierarchy based on the belief in the legitimacy of the rule of a supposedly superior minority over the inferior masses. Regarding the socio-cultural dimension of nationality, culture and
migration, one far-right position is the view that certain ethnic,
racial, or religious groups should stay separate, based on the belief
that the interests of one's own group should be prioritized.
In comparing the Western European and post-Communist
Central European far-right, Kopeček writes that "[t]he Central European
far right was also typified by a strong anti-Communism, much more
markedly than in Western Europe", allowing for "a basic ideological
classification within a unified party family, despite the heterogeneity
of the far right parties". Kopeček concludes that a comparison of
Central European far-right parties with those of Western Europe shows
that "these four elements are present in Central Europe as well, though
in a somewhat modified form, despite differing political, economic, and
social influences." In the American and more general Anglo-Saxon environment, the most common term is "radical right", which has a broader meaning than the European radical right. Mudde defines the American radical right
as an "old school of nativism, populism, and hostility to central
government [which] was said to have developed into the post-World War II
combination of ultranationalism and anti-communism, Christian
fundamentalism, militaristic orientation, and anti-alien sentiment".
Jodi Dean
argues that "the rise of far-right anti-communism in many parts of the
world" should be interpreted "as a politics of fear, which utilizes the
disaffection and anger generated by capitalism. [...] Partisans of far
right-wing organizations, in turn, use anti-communism to challenge every
political current which is not embedded in a clearly exposed
nationalist and racist agenda. For them, both the USSR and the European
Union, leftist liberals, ecologists, and supranational corporations –
all of these may be called 'communist' for the sake of their
expediency."
According to Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg,
the modern ambiguities in the definition of far-right politics lie in
the fact that the concept is generally used by political adversaries to
"disqualify and stigmatize all forms of partisan nationalism by reducing
them to the historical experiments of Italian Fascism [and] German National Socialism". Mudde agrees and notes that "the term is not only used for scientific
purposes but also for political purposes. Several authors define
right-wing extremism as a sort of anti-thesis against their own
beliefs." While the existence of such a political position is widely accepted
among scholars, figures associated with the far-right rarely accept this
denomination, preferring terms like "national movement" or "national
right". There is also debate about how appropriate the labels neo-fascist or neo-Nazi
are. In the words of Mudde, "the labels Neo-Nazi and to a lesser extent
neo-Fascism are now used exclusively for parties and groups that
explicitly state a desire to restore the Third Reich or quote historical National Socialism as their ideological influence."
According to Léonie de Jonge the term "far right", as used generally among political scientists, is an umbrella term which encompasses the theoretically distinct "radical right" and "extreme right". One issue is whether parties should be labelled radical or extreme, a distinction that is made by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany when determining whether or not a party should be banned. Within the broader family of the far right, the extreme right is
revolutionary, opposing popular sovereignty and majority rule, and
sometimes supporting violence, whereas the radical right is reformist,
accepting free elections, but opposing fundamental elements of liberal
democracy such as minority rights, rule of law, or separation of powers.
After a survey of the academic literature, Mudde concluded in 2002 that the terms "right-wing extremism", "right-wing populism",
"national populism", or "neo-populism" were often used as synonyms by
scholars (or, nonetheless, terms with "striking similarities"), except
notably among a few authors studying the extremist-theoretical
tradition.
Relation to right-wing politics
Italian philosopher and political scientist Norberto Bobbio argues that attitudes towards equality are primarily what distinguish left-wing politics from right-wing politics on the political spectrum: "the left considers the key inequalities between people to be
artificial and negative, which should be overcome by an active state,
whereas the right believes that inequalities between people are natural
and positive, and should be either defended or left alone by the state."
Aspects of far-right ideology can be identified in the agenda of
some contemporary right-wing parties: in particular, the idea that
superior persons should dominate society while undesirable elements
should be purged, which in extreme cases has resulted in genocides. Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform in London, distinguishes between fascism and right-wing nationalist parties which are often described as far right such as the National Front in France. Mudde notes that the most successful European far-right parties in 2019
were "former mainstream right-wing parties that have turned into
populist radical right ones". According to historian Mark Sedgwick,
"[t]here is no general agreement as to where the mainstream ends and
the extreme starts, and if there ever had been agreement on this, the
recent shift in the mainstream would challenge it."
Proponents of the horseshoe theory interpretation of the left–right political spectrum identify the far left and the far right as having more in common with each other as extremists than each of them has with centrists or moderates. This theory has received criticism, including the argument that it has been centrists who have supported far-right and fascist regimes over socialist ones.
Nature of support
Jens Rydgren
describes a number of theories as to why individuals support far-right
political parties and the academic literature on this topic
distinguishes between demand-side theories that have changed the
"interests, emotions, attitudes and preferences of voters" and
supply-side theories which focus on the programmes of parties, their
organization and the opportunity structures within individual political
systems. The most common demand-side theories are the social breakdown thesis, the relative deprivation thesis, the modernization losers thesis and the ethnic competition thesis.
The rise of far-right parties has also been viewed as a rejection of post-materialist values on the part of some voters. This theory which is known as the reverse post-material thesis blames both left-wing and progressive parties for embracing a post-material agenda (including feminism and environmentalism) that alienates traditional working class voters. Another study argues that individuals who join far-right parties
determine whether those parties develop into major political players or
whether they remain marginalized.
Early academic studies adopted psychoanalytical explanations for the far right's support. The 1933 publication The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich argued the theory that fascists came to power in Germany as a result of sexual repression.
For some far-right parties in Western Europe, the issue of immigration
has become the dominant issue among them, so much so that some scholars
refer to these parties as "anti-immigrant" parties.
Intellectual history
Background
The French Revolution
in 1789 created a major shift in political thought by challenging the
established ideas supporting hierarchy with new ones about universal equality and freedom. The modern left–right political spectrum also emerged during this period. Democrats and proponents of universal suffrage were located on the left side of the elected French Assembly, while monarchists seated farthest to the right.
The strongest opponents of liberalism and democracy during the 19th century, such as Joseph de Maistre and Friedrich Nietzsche, were highly critical of the French Revolution. Those who advocated a return to the absolute monarchy during the 19th century called themselves "ultra-monarchists" and embraced a "mystic" and "providentialist"
vision of the world where royal dynasties were seen as the
"repositories of divine will". The opposition to liberal modernity was
based on the belief that hierarchy and rootedness are more important
than equality and liberty, with the latter two being dehumanizing.
Emergence
In the French public debate following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, far right was used to describe the strongest opponents of the far left, those who supported the events occurring in Russia. A number of thinkers on the far right nonetheless claimed an influence from an anti-Marxist and anti-egalitarian interpretation of socialism, based on a military comradeship that rejected Marxistclass analysis, or what Oswald Spengler had called a "socialism of the blood", which is sometimes described by scholars as a form of "socialist revisionism". They included Charles Maurras, Benito Mussolini, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck and Ernst Niekisch. Those thinkers eventually split along nationalist lines from the original communist movement, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels contradicting nationalist theories with the idea that "the working men [had] no country." The main reason for that ideological confusion can be found in the consequences of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, which according to Swiss historian Philippe Burrin
had completely redesigned the political landscape in Europe by
diffusing the idea of an anti-individualistic concept of "national
unity" rising above the right and left division.
As the concept of "the masses" was introduced into the political debate through industrialization and the universal suffrage, a new right-wing founded on national and social ideas began to emerge, what Zeev Sternhell has called the "revolutionary right" and a foreshadowing of fascism.
The rift between the left and nationalists was furthermore accentuated
by the emergence of anti-militarist and anti-patriotic movements like anarchism or syndicalism, which shared even fewer similarities with the far right. The latter began to develop a "nationalist mysticism" entirely
different from that on the left, and antisemitism turned into a credo of
the far right, marking a break from the traditional economic
"anti-Judaism" defended by parts of the far left, in favor of a racial
and pseudo-scientific notion of alterity. Various nationalist leagues began to form across Europe like the Pan-German League or the Ligue des Patriotes, with the common goal of a uniting the masses beyond social divisions.
The Völkisch movement emerged in the late 19th century, drawing inspiration from German Romanticism and its fascination for a medieval Reich supposedly organized into a harmonious hierarchical order. Erected on the idea of "blood and soil", it was a racialist, populist, agrarian, romantic nationalist and an antisemitic movement from the 1900s onward as a consequence of a growing exclusive and racial connotation. They idealized the myth of an "original nation", that still could be
found at their times in the rural regions of Germany, a form of
"primitive democracy freely subjected to their natural elites". Thinkers led by Arthur de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Alexis Carrel and Georges Vacher de Lapouge distorted Darwin's theory of evolution
to advocate a "race struggle" and an hygienist vision of the world. The
purity of the bio-mystical and primordial nation theorized by the Völkischen then began to be seen as corrupted by foreign elements, Jewish in particular.
Translated in Maurice Barrès'
concept of "the earth and the dead", these ideas influenced the
pre-fascist "revolutionary right" across Europe. The latter had its
origin in the fin de siècle intellectual crisis and it was, in the words of Fritz Stern, the deep "cultural despair" of thinkers feeling uprooted within the rationalism and scientism of the modern world. It was characterized by a rejection of the established social order,
with revolutionary tendencies and anti-capitalist stances, a populist
and plebiscitary dimension, the advocacy of violence as a means of action and a call for individual and collective palingenesis ("regeneration, rebirth").
In a 1961 book deemed influential in the European far-right at large, French neo-fascist writer Maurice Bardèche introduced the idea that fascism could survive the 20th century under a new metapolitical guise adapted to the changes of the times. Rather than trying to revive doomed regimes with their single party, secret police or public display of Caesarism, Bardèche argued that its theorists should promote the core philosophical idea of fascism regardless of its framework, i.e. the concept that only a minority, "the physically saner, the
morally purer, the most conscious of national interest", can represent
best the community and serve the less gifted in what Bardèche calls a
new "feudal contract".
The far-right Spanish party Vox initially introduced the Madrid Charter project, a planned group to denounce left-wing groups in Ibero-America, to the government of United States president Donald Trump while visiting the United States in February 2019, with Santiago Abascal and Rafael Bardají using their good relations with the administration to build support within the Republican Party and establishing strong ties with American contacts. In March 2019, Abascal tweeted an image of himself wearing a morion similar to a conquistador, with ABC writing in an article detailing the document that this event provided a narrative that "symbolizes in part the expansionist mood of Vox and its ideology far from Spain". The charter subsequently grew to include signers that had little to no relation to Latin America and Spanish-speaking areas. Vox has advised Javier Milei in Argentina, the Bolsonaro family in Brazil, José Antonio Kast in Chile and Keiko Fujimori in Peru.
Nationalists from Europe and the United States met at a Holiday
Inn in St. Petersburg on March 22, 2015, for first convention of the
International Russian Conservative Forum organized by pro-Putin Rodina-party. The event was attended by fringe right-wing extremists like Nordic Resistance Movement from Scandinavia but also by more mainstream MEPs from Golden Dawn and National Democratic Party of Germany. In addition to Rodina, Russian neo-Nazis from Russian Imperial Movement and Rusich Group were also in attendance. The event was attended by several notable American white supremacists including Jared Taylor and Brandon Russell.
A number of far-right extremist and paramilitary groups carried out the Rwandan genocide under the racial supremacist ideology of Hutu Power, developed by journalist and Hutu supremacist Hassan Ngeze. On 5 July 1975, exactly two years after the 1973 Rwandan coup d'état, the far right National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND) was founded under president Juvénal Habyarimana. Between 1975 and 1991, the MRND was the only legal political party in the country. It was dominated by Hutus,
particularly from Habyarimana's home region of Northern Rwanda. An
elite group of MRND party members who were known to have influence on
the President and his wife Agathe Habyarimana are known as the akazu, an informal organization of Hutu extremists whose members planned and led the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Félicien Kabuga, a prominent Hutu businessman and member of the akazu, was a leading financier of the genocide; he provided thousands of machetes, which were the usual weapons used to kill. Kabuga also founded Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, used to broadcast propaganda and direct the génocidaires. Kabuga was arrested in France on 16 May 2020, and charged with crimes against humanity.
The Interahamwe was formed around 1990 as the youth wing of the MRND and enjoyed the backing of the Hutu Power government. The Interahamwe were driven out of Rwanda after Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front victory in the Rwandan Civil War in July 1994 and are considered a terrorist organization by many African and Western governments. The Interahamwe and splinter groups such as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda continue to wage an insurgency
against Rwanda from neighboring countries, where they are also involved
in local conflicts and terrorism. The Interahamwe were the main
perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide, during which an estimated 500,000
to 1,000,000 Tutsi, Twa and moderate Hutus were killed from April to July 1994 and the term Interahamwe was widened to mean any civilian bands killing Tutsi.
Other far-right groups and paramilitaries involved included the anti-democraticsegregationist
Coalition for the Defence of the Republic (CDR), which called for
complete segregation of Hutus from Tutsis. The CDR had a paramilitary
wing known as the Impuzamugambi. Together with the Interahamwe militia, the Impuzamugambi played a central role in the Rwandan genocide.
In 1969, the Herstigte Nasionale Party (HNP) under Albert Hertzog emerged as a breakaway group from the governing South African National Party, an Afrikanerethno-nationalist party that implemented the racist, segregationist program of apartheid,
the legal system of political, economic and social separation of the
races intended to maintain and extend political and economic control of
South Africa by the White minority. The HNP was formed after the South African National Party re-established diplomatic relations with Malawi and legislated to allow Māori players and spectators to enter the country during the 1970 New Zealand rugby union team tour in South Africa. The HNP advocated for a Calvinist, racially segregated and Afrikaans-speaking nation.
In 1973, Eugène Terre'Blanche, a former police officer founded the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement), a South African neo-Nazi paramilitary organization, often described as a white supremacist group. Since its founding in 1973 by Eugène Terre'Blanche and six other far-right Afrikaners, it has been dedicated to secessionist Afrikaner nationalism and the creation of an independent Boer-Afrikaner republic in part of South Africa. During negotiations to end apartheid in South Africa in the early 1990s, the organization terrorized and killed black South Africans.
Togo has been ruled by members of the Gnassingbé family and the far-right military dictatorship formerly known as the Rally of the Togolese People
since 1969. Despite the legalization of political parties in 1991 and
the ratification of a democratic constitution in 1992, the regime
continues to be regarded as oppressive. In 1993, the European Union cut
off aid in reaction to the regime's human-rights offenses. After's
Eyadema's death in 2005, his son Faure Gnassingbe took over, then stood
down and was re-elected in elections that were widely described as
fraudulent and occasioned violence that resulted in as many as 600
deaths and the flight from Togo of 40,000 refugees. In 2012, Faure Gnassingbe dissolved the RTP and created the Union for the Republic.
Throughout the reign of the Gnassingbé family, Togo has been extremely oppressive. According to a United States Department of State
report based on conditions in 2010, human rights abuses are common and
include "security force use of excessive force, including torture,
which resulted in deaths and injuries; official impunity; harsh and
life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrests and detention;
lengthy pretrial detention; executive influence over the judiciary;
infringement of citizens' privacy rights; restrictions on freedoms of press, assembly,
and movement; official corruption; discrimination and violence against
women; child abuse, including female genital mutilation (FGM), and
sexual exploitation of children; regional and ethnic discrimination;
trafficking in persons, especially women and children; societal
discrimination against persons with disabilities; official and societal
discrimination against homosexual persons; societal discrimination
against persons with HIV; and forced labor, including by children."
During the 1920s and 1930s, a local brand of religious fascism appeared known as Brazilian Integralism, coalescing around the party known as Brazilian Integralist Action. It adopted many characteristics of European fascist movements, including a green-shirted paramilitary organization with uniformed ranks, highly regimented street demonstrations and rhetoric against Marxism and liberalism.
Prior to World War II, the Nazi Party had been making and
distributing propaganda among ethnic Germans in Brazil. The Nazi regime
built close ties with Brazil through the estimated 100 thousand native
Germans and 1 million German descendants living in Brazil at the time. In 1928, the Brazilian section of the Nazi Party was founded in Timbó,
Santa Catarina. This section reached 2,822 members and was the largest
section of the Nazi Party outside Germany. About 100 thousand born Germans and about one million descendants lived in Brazil at that time.
After Germany's defeat in World War II, many Nazi war criminals
fled to Brazil and hid among the German-Brazilian communities. The most
notable example of this was Josef Mengele, a Nazi SS officer and physician known as the "Angel of Death" for his deadly experiments on prisoners at the Auschwitz II (Birkenau)
concentration camp, who fled first to Argentina, then Paraguay, before
finally settling in Brazil in 1960. Mengele eventually drowned in 1979
in Bertioga, on the coast of São Paulo state, without ever having been recognized in his 19 years in Brazil.
Mano Blanca, otherwise known as the Movement of Organized
Nationalist Action, was set up in 1966 as a front for the MLN to carry
out its more violent activities, along with many other similar groups, including the New Anticommunist Organization and the Anticommunist Council of Guatemala. Mano Blanca was active during the governments of colonel Carlos Arana Osorio and general Kjell Laugerud García and was dissolved by general Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia in 1978.
Armed with the support and coordination of the Guatemalan Armed
Forces, Mano Blanca began a campaign described by the United States
Department of State as one of "kidnappings, torture, and summary execution". One of the main targets of Mano Blanca was the Revolutionary Party,
an anti-communist group that was the only major reform oriented party
allowed to operate under the military-dominated regime. Other targets
included the banned leftist parties. Human rights activist Blase Bonpane
described the activities of Mano Blanca as being an integral part of
the policy of the Guatemalan government and by extension the policy of
the United States government and the Central Intelligence Agency. Overall, Mano Blanca was responsible for thousands of murders and kidnappings, leading travel writer Paul Theroux to refer to them as "Guatemala's version of a volunteer Gestapo unit".
Following the end of Pinochet's government, the National Party would split to become the more centrist National Renewal (RN), while individuals who supported Pinochet organized Independent Democratic Union (UDI). UDI is a far-right political party that was formed by former Pinochet officials. In 2019, the far-right Republican Party was founded by José Antonio Kast, a UDI politician who believed his former party criticized Pinochet too often. According to Cox and Blanco, the Republican Party appeared in Chilean politics in a similar manner to Spain's Vox party, with both parties splitting off from an existing right wing party to collect disillusioned voters.
A billboard serving as a reminder of one of many massacres in El Salvador that occurred during the civil war
During the Salvadoran Civil War, far-right death squads known in Spanish by the name of Escuadrón de la Muerte, literally "Squadron of Death, achieved notoriety when a sniper assassinated Archbishop Óscar Romero while he was saying mass in March 1980. In December 1980, three American nuns and a lay worker were gangraped
and murdered by a military unit later found to have been acting on
specific orders. Death squads were instrumental in killing thousands of
peasants and activists. Funding for the squads came primarily from
right-wing Salvadoran businessmen and landowners.
El Salvadorian death squads indirectly received arms, funding, training and advice during the Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations. Some death squads such as Sombra Negra are still operating in El Salvador.
Honduras also had far-right death squads active through the 1980s, the most notorious of which was Battalion 3–16.
Hundreds of people, teachers, politicians and union bosses were
assassinated by government-backed forces. Battalion 316 received
substantial support and training from the United States through the
Central Intelligence Agency. At least nineteen members were School of the Americas graduates. As of mid-2006, seven members, including Billy Joya, later played important roles in the administration of President Manuel Zelaya.
Following the 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis, former Battalion 3–16 member Nelson Willy Mejía Mejía became Director-General of Immigration and Billy Joya was de facto President Roberto Micheletti's security advisor. Napoleón Nassar Herrera, another former Battalion 3–16 member, was high Commissioner of Police for the north-west region under Zelaya
and under Micheletti, even becoming a Secretary of Security spokesperson
"for dialogue" under Micheletti. Zelaya claimed that Joya had reactivated the death squad, with dozens
of government opponents having been murdered since the ascent of the
Michiletti and Lobo governments.
The largest far-right party in Mexico is the National Synarchist
Union. It was historically a movement of the Roman Catholic extreme
right, in some ways akin to clerical fascism and Falangism, strongly opposed to the left-wing and secularist policies of the Institutional Revolutionary Party and its predecessors that governed Mexico from 1929 to 2000 and 2012 to 2018.
Though US President Trump said in September 2025 that "the radicals on the left are the problem" with political violence, cumulatively over decades, most extremist killings in the US have been caused by right-wing perpetrators. From 2022 through 2024, all 61 political killings were committed by right-wing extremists.
Over
decades, right wing ideologically motivated homicides have
substantially outnumbered those perpetrated by left wing perpetrators in
the US. Also, far-right motivated homicides have occurred much more frequently than jihadi violence inspired by Islamic extremism (not shown in chart).
Ku Klux Klan parade in Washington, D.C., September 1926
During the Cold War and the Red Scares, the far right "saw spies and communists influencing government and entertainment. Thus, despite bipartisan anticommunism in the United States, it was the right that mainly fought the great ideological battle against the communists." The John Birch Society,
founded in 1958, is a prominent example of a far-right organization
mainly concerned with anti-communism and the perceived threat of
communism. Neo-Nazi militant Robert Jay Matthews of the White supremacist group The Order came to support the John Birch Society, especially when conservative icon Barry Goldwater from Arizona ran for the presidency on the Republican Party ticket. Far-right conservatives consider John Birch to be the first casualty of the Cold War. In the 1990s, many conservatives turned against then-President George H. W. Bush, who pleasured neither the Republican Party's more moderate and far-right wings. As a result, Bush was primared by Pat Buchanan. In the 2000s, critics of President George W. Bush's conservative unilateralism argued it can be traced to both Vice President Dick Cheney
who embraced the policy since the early 1990s and to far-right
Congressmen who won their seats during the conservative revolution of
1994.
Although small voluntary militias had existed in the United
States throughout the latter half of the 20th century, the groups became
more popular during the early 1990s, after a series of standoffs
between armed citizens and federal government agents, such as the 1992 Ruby Ridge siege and 1993 Waco Siege. These groups expressed concern for what they perceived as government tyranny within the United States and generally held constitutionalist, libertarian, and right-libertarian
political views, with a strong focus on the Second Amendment gun rights
and tax protest. They also embraced many of the same conspiracy
theories as predecessor groups on the radical right, particularly the New World Order conspiracy theory. Examples of such groups are the patriot and militia movements Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters. A minority of militia groups, such as the Aryan Nations and the Posse Comitatus, were White nationalists and saw militia and patriot movements as a form of White resistance against what they perceived to be a liberal and multiculturalist government. Militia and patriot organizations were involved in the 2014 Bundy standoff and the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
Chetan Bhatt, in White Extinction: Metaphysical Elements of Contemporary Western Fascism, says that "The 'fear of white extinction', and related ideas of population eugenics,
have travelled far and represent a wider political anxiety about 'white
displacement' in the US, UK, and Europe that has fuelled the right-wing
phenomena referred to by that sanitizing word 'populism', a term that neatly evades attention to the racism and white majoritarianism that energizes it."
Some scholars have argued that the similarities between the
Chinese Communist Party in the 21st century and classical fascist
regimes lie in their proximity to state capitalism (rather than orthodox communism), as well as their anti-democratic, anti-labor, and chauvinistic expansionism, but others have criticized the fascism label as "ahistorical" due to the absence of mass mobilization, along with its Marxist-Leninist ideological roots.
The two main political camps in today's Iran are Principlists and Reformists. Principlists, especially "Neoconservatives", have far-right and ultra-conservative views.
Kach was a radical Orthodox Jewish, religious Zionistpolitical party in Israel, existing from 1971 to 1994. Founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1971, based on his Jewish-Orthodox-nationalist ideology subsequently known as Kahanism, which held the view that most Arabs living in Israel are enemies of Jews and Israel itself, and believed that a Jewish theocratic state, where non-Jews have no voting rights, should be created. The party secured a single seat in the Knesset in the 1984 election, but was subsequently barred from standing in elections, and both it and
Kahanist organizations were banned outright in 1994 by the Israeli cabinet under 1948 anti-terrorism laws, following statements by it in support of the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre by a Kach supporter.
There is also a complex relationship between Israel and the European far-right that has been developing for more than 15 years. The first major public sign of their alliance was in 2010 at an
international far-right conference in Tel Aviv organized by a Likud
party member. A primary motivation is a shared anti-Islam ideology but there is also a
common dislike of the European Union, of Arab and Muslim immigrants as
well as support for undermining democracy and installing autocratic, or
worse, rulers and regimes. "Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister's son,
last week called for the death of the European Union and the return of a
'Christian' Europe." Other details suggest a deeper collaboration between the Likud party and the German AfD.
"In 2019, the Bundestag passed a resolution condemning B.D.S. as
antisemitic..The history of the resolution is telling. A version was
originally introduced by the AfD" Netanyahu's government has actively cultivated relations with various
European far-right parties and leaders, including Vlaams Belang, Attack,
the Freedom Party of Austria, the Alliance for the Union of Romanians
and the Sweden Democrats.
These parties offer strong support for Israel's hardline policies
towards Palestinians, its opposition to Palestinian statehood, and its
pro-settlement stance. Netanyahu has also cultivated a particularly strong bond with Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party in Hungary, a key figure in the European far-right landscape. The Likud party recently joined the Patriots for Europe alliance in the European Parliament as an observer member.
In 1996, the National Police Agency estimated that there were over 1,000 extremist right-wing groups in Japan, with about 100,000 members in total. These groups are known in Japanese as Uyoku dantai. While there are political differences among the groups, they generally carry a philosophy of anti-leftism, hostility towards China, North Korea and South Korea, and justification of Japan's role and war crimes in World War II. Uyoku dantai groups are well known for their highly visible propaganda vehicles fitted with loudspeakers
and prominently marked with the name of the group and propaganda
slogans. The vehicles play patriotic or wartime-era Japanese songs.
Activists affiliated with such groups have used Molotov cocktails and time bombs to intimidate moderate Japanese politicians and public figures, including former Deputy Foreign Minister Hitoshi Tanaka and Fuji Xerox Chairman Yotaro Kobayashi. An ex-member of a right-wing group set fire to Liberal Democratic Party politician Koichi Kato's house. Koichi Kato and Yotaro Kobayashi had spoken out against Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni Shrine. Openly revisionist, Nippon Kaigi is considered "the biggest right-wing organization in Japan".
Individuals and groups in Croatia that employ far-right politics are most often associated with the historical Ustaše movement, hence they have connections to neo-Nazism and neo-fascism. That World War II political movement was an extremist organization at the time supported by the German Nazis and the Italian Fascists. The association with the Ustaše has been called neo-Ustashism by Slavko Goldstein. Most active far-right political parties in Croatia openly state their continuity with the Ustaše. These include the Croatian Party of Rights and Authentic Croatian Party of Rights. Croatia's far-right often advocates the false theory that the Jasenovac concentration camp was a "labour camp" where mass murder did not take place.
Estonia's most significant far-right movement was the Vaps movement. Its ideological predecessor Valve Liit was founded by Admiral Johan Pitka
and later banned for maligning the government. The organization became
politicized quickly Vaps soon turned into a mass fascist movement. In 1933, Estonians voted on Vaps' proposed changes to the constitution
and the party later won a large proportion of the vote. However, the
State Elder Konstantin Päts declared state of emergency and imprisoned
the leadership of the Vaps. In 1935, all political parties were banned.
In 1935, a Vaps coup attempt was discovered, which led to the banning of
the Finnish Patriotic People's Movement's youth wing that had been secretly aiding and arming them.
In Finland, support for the far right was most widespread between 1920 and 1940 when the Academic Karelia Society, Lapua Movement, Patriotic People's Movement and Vientirauha operated in the country and had hundreds of thousands of members. Far-right groups exercised considerable political power during this
period, pressuring the government to outlaw communist parties and
newspapers and expel Freemasons from the armed forces. During the Cold War, all parties deemed fascist were banned according to the Paris Peace Treaties and all former fascist activists had to find new political homes. Despite Finlandization, many continued in public life. Three former members of the Waffen SS served as ministers of defense; Sulo Suorttanen and Pekka Malinen as well as Mikko Laaksonen.[276]
The skinhead culture gained momentum during the late 1980s and peaked
during the late 1990s. Numerous hate crimes were committed against
refugees, including a number of racially motivated murders.
Today, the most prominent neo-Nazi group is the Nordic Resistance Movement,
which is tied to multiple murders, attempted murders and assaults of
political enemies was found in 2006 and proscribed in 2019. Prominent
far-right parties include the Blue-and-Black Movement and Power Belongs to the People. The second biggest Finnish party, the Finns Party, has been described as far right. The former leader of the Finns party and current speaker of the Parliament Jussi Halla-aho,
has been convicted of hate speech due to his comments stating that,
"Prophet Muhammad was a pedophile and Islam justifies pedophilia and
Pedophilia was Allah's will." Finns Party members have frequently
supported far-right and neo-Nazi movements such as the Finnish Defense
League, Soldiers of Odin, Nordic Resistance Movement, Rajat Kiinni
(Close the Borders), and Suomi Ensin (Finland First). " In the 1990s and 2000s, before the breakthrough of the Finns Party, a
few neo-Nazi candidates enjoyed success, like Janne Kujala of Finland - Fatherland (founded as Aryan Germanic Brotherhood) and Jouni Lanamäki who was previously associated with the Nordic Reich Party. Pekka Siitoin of the National Democracy Party was the fifth most popular candidate in Naantali city council elections.
The NRM and Finns party and other far-right groups organize an annual torch march demonstration in Helsinki in memory of the Finnish SS-battalion on the Finnish independence day which ends at the Hietaniemi cemetery where members visit the tomb of Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim and the monument to the Finnish SS Battalion. The event is protested by antifascists, leading to counterdemonstrators
being violently assaulted by NRM members who act as security. The
demonstration attracts close to 3,000 participants according to the
estimates of the police and hundreds of officers patrol Helsinki to
prevent violent clashes.
The largest far-right party in Europe is the French anti-immigration party National Rally, formally known as the National Front. The party was founded in 1972, uniting a variety of French far-right groups under the leadership of Jean-Marie Le Pen. Since 1984, it has been the major force of French nationalism. Jean-Marie Le Pen's daughter Marine Le Pen
was elected to succeed him as party leader in 2012. Under Jean-Marie Le
Pen's leadership, the party sparked outrage for hate speech, including Holocaust denial and Islamophobia.
Right-wing populists protesting against Muslims in Germany, 2008
In 1945, the Allied powers took control of Germany and banned the swastika, Nazi Party and the publication of Mein Kampf. Explicitly Nazi and neo-Nazi organizations are banned in Germany. In 1960, the West German parliament voted unanimously to "make it
illegal to incite hatred, to provoke violence, or to insult, ridicule or
defame 'parts of the population' in a manner apt to breach the peace".
German law outlaws anything that "approves of, glorifies or justifies
the violent and despotic rule of the National Socialists". Section 86a of the Strafgesetzbuch
(Criminal Code) outlaws any "use of symbols of unconstitutional
organizations" outside the contexts of "art or science, research or
teaching". The law primarily outlaws the use of Nazi symbols, flags,
insignia, uniforms, slogans and forms of greeting. In the 21st century, the German far right consists of various small parties and two larger groups, namely Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Pegida.
In March 2021, the Germany domestic intelligence agency Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution
placed the AfD under surveillance, the first time in the post-war
period that a main opposition party had been subjected to such scrutiny.
The far right in Greece first came to power under the ideology of Metaxism, a proto-fascist ideology developed by dictator Ioannis Metaxas. Metaxism called for the regeneration of the Greek nation and the establishment of an ethnically homogeneous state. Metaxism disparaged liberalism,
and held individual interests to be subordinate to those of the nation,
seeking to mobilize the Greek people as a disciplined mass in service
to the creation of a "new Greece".
The Metaxis regime came to an end after the Axis powers invaded Greece. The Axis occupation of Greece began in April 1941. The occupation ruined the Greek economy and brought about terrible hardships for the Greek civilian population. The Jewish population of Greece was nearly eradicated. Of its pre-war
population of 75–77,000, only around 11–12,000 survived, either by
joining the resistance or being hidden. Following the short-lived interim government of Georgios Papandreou, the military seized power in Greece during the 1967 Greek coup d'état, replacing the interim government with the right-wing United States-backed Greek junta. The Junta was a series of military juntas that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974. The dictatorship was characterized by right-wing cultural policies, restrictions on civil liberties and the imprisonment, torture and exile of political opponents. The junta's rule ended on 24 July 1974 under the pressure of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, leading to the Metapolitefsi ("regime change") to democracy and the establishment of the Third Hellenic Republic.
Until 2019, the dominant far-right party in Greece in the 21st century was the neo-Nazi and Mataxist inspired Golden Dawn. At the May 2012 Greek legislative election, Golden Dawn won 21 seats in the Hellenic Parliament, receiving 6.97% of the vote. It became the third largest party in the Greek Parliament with 17 seats after the January 2015 election, winning 6.28% of the vote.
Founded by Nikolaos Michaloliakos,
Golden Dawn had its origins in the movement that worked towards a
return to right-wing military dictatorship in Greece. Following an
investigation into the 2013 murder of Pavlos Fyssas, an anti-fascist rapper, by a supporter of the party, Michaloliakos and several other Golden Dawn parliamentarians and members were arrested and held in pre-trial detention on suspicion of forming a criminal organization. The trial began on 20 April 2015 and eventually led to the conviction of 7 of its leaders for heading a
criminal organization and 61 other defendants for participating in a
criminal organization. Guilty verdicts on charges of murder, attempted murder, and violent
attacks on immigrants and left-wing political opponents were also
delivered and prison sentences of a combined total of over 500 years
were handed out.
The far right has maintained a continuous political presence in Italy since the fall of Mussolini. The neo-fascist party Italian Social Movement (1946–1995), influenced by the previous Italian Social Republic
(1943–1945), became one of the chief reference points for the European
far-right from the end of World War II until the late 1980s.
Despite being neutral, the Netherlands was invaded by Nazi Germany on 10 May 1940 as part of Fall Gelb. About 70% of the country's Jewish population were killed during the
occupation, a much higher percentage than comparable countries such as
Belgium and France. Most of the south of the country was liberated in the second half of
1944. The rest, especially the west and north of the country still under
occupation, suffered from a famine at the end of 1944 known as the Hunger Winter. On 5 May 1945, the whole country was finally liberated by the total surrender of all German forces.
Since the end of World War II, the Netherlands has had a number of
small far-right groups and parties, the largest and most successful
being the Party for Freedom led by Geert Wilders. Other far-right Dutch groups include the neo-Nazi Dutch People's Union (1973–present), the Centre Party (1982–1986), the Centre Party '86 (1986–1998), the Dutch Block (1992–2000), New National Party (1998–2005) and the ultranationalist National Alliance (2003–2007).
In 2019, the Confederation Liberty and Independence
earned 1,256,953 votes which was 6.81% of the total vote in an election
that saw a historically high turnout. Members of far-right groups make
up a significant portion of those taking part in the annual Independence
March in central Warsaw which started in 2009 to mark Independence Day.
About 60,000 were in the 2017 march marking the 99th anniversary of
independence, with placards such as "Clean Blood" seen on the march. Law and Justice, the previous governing party of Poland, has sometimes been described as far-right, although it is also considered centre-right instead, or it is argued that the party is not far-right, with political scientist Michael Minkerberg arguing that the party is "not a radical right party but right-wing populist".
The preeminent far-right party in Romania is the Greater Romania Party, founded in 1991 by Tudor, who was formerly known as a "court poet" of Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his literary mentor, the writer Eugen Barbu, one year after Tudor launched the România Mare
weekly magazine, which remains the most important propaganda tool of
the PRM. Tudor subsequently launched a companion daily newspaper called Tricolorul. The historical expression Greater Romania refers to the idea of recreating the former Kingdom of Romania which existed during the interwar period. Having been the largest entity to bear the name of Romania, the frontiers were marked with the intent of uniting most territories inhabited by ethnic Romanians into a single country and it is now a rallying cry for Romanian nationalists. Due to internal conditions under Communist Romania after World War II, the expression's use was forbidden in publications until after the Romanian Revolution in 1989. The party's initial success was partly attributed to the deep rootedness of Ceaușescu's national communism in Romania.
Both the ideology and the main political focus of the Greater
Romania Party are reflected in frequently strongly nationalistic
articles written by Tudor. The party has called for the outlawing of the
ethnic Hungarian party, the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania, for allegedly plotting the secession of Transylvania.
The period of development of Russian fascism in the 1930s–1940s was characterized by sympathy for Italian fascism and German Nazism and pronounced anti-communism and antisemitism.
The Russian Fascist Party in the first half of the 20th century. The slogan "Let's get our homeland!" is also used by the modern far-right in Russia.
Russian fascism has its roots in the movements known in history as the Black Hundreds and the White movement. It was distributed among white émigré circles living in Germany, Manchukuo,
and the United States. In Germany and the United States (unlike
Manchukuo), they practically did not conduct political activity,
limiting themselves to the publication of newspapers and brochures.
Some ideologues of the white movement, such as Ivan Ilyin and Vasily Shulgin,
welcomed the coming to power of Mussolini in Italy and Hitler in
Germany, offering their comrades-in-arms the fascist "method" as a way
to fight socialism, communism, and godlessness. At the same time, they did not deny fascist political repression and antisemitism and even justified them.
Far right Russian demonstration
With the outbreak of World War II, Russian fascists in Germany
supported Nazi Germany and joined the ranks of Russian collaborators.
Some Russian neo-Nazi organizations are part of the international World Union of National Socialists
(WUNS, founded in 1962). As of 2012, six Russian organizations are
among the officially registered members of the union: National
Resistance, National Socialist Movement – Russian Division, All-Russian
Public Patriotic Movement "Russian National Unity", National Socialist Movement "Slavic Union" (prohibited by a court decision in June 2010), and others. The following organizations are not included in WUNS: the National Socialist Society (banned by a court decision in 2010), the Russian All-National Union
(banned in September 2011), and others, such as skinheads: Legion
Werewolf (liquidated in 1996), Schultz-88 (liquidated in 2006), White
Wolves (liquidated in 2008–2010), New Order (ceased to exist), Russian
goal (ceased to exist), and others. Some of the more radical neo-Nazi
organizations, using terrorist methods, belonged to skinhead groups such
as the Werewolf Legion (liquidated in 1996), Schultz-88 (liquidated in
2006), White Wolves (liquidated in 2008–2010), New Order (ceased to
exist), "Russian Goal" (ceased to exist), and others.
Until the end of the 1990s, one of the largest parties of Russian
national extremists was the neo-Nazi socio-political movement "Russian
National Unity" (RNE), founded by Alexander Barkashov
in 1990. At the end of 1999, the RNE made an unsuccessful attempt to
take part in the elections to the State Duma. Barkashov considered "true
Orthodoxy" as a fusion of Christianity with paganism and advocated the
"Russian God" and the "Aryan swastika" allegedly associated with it. He
wrote about the Atlanteans, the Etruscans, and the "Aryan" civilization as the direct predecessors of the Russian nation, in a centuries-old struggle with the "Semites", the "world Jewish conspiracy",
and the "dominance of the Jews in Russia". The symbol of the movement
was a modified swastika. Barkashov was a parishioner of the "True Orthodox ("Catacomb") Church", and the first cells of the RNE were formed as brotherhoods and communities of the RTOC.
The ideology of Russian neo-Nazism is closely connected with the ideology of Slavic neo-paganism (rodnovery).
In a number of cases, there are also organizational ties between
neo-Nazis and neo-pagans. One of the founders of Russian neo-paganism,
the former dissident Alexey Dobrovolsky (pagan name – Dobroslav) shared the ideas of Nazism and transferred them to his neo-pagan teaching. Modern Russian neo-paganism took shape in the second half of the 1970s and is associated with the activities of Dobrovolsky and Moscow Arabist Valery Yemelyanov (neo-pagan name – Velemir), both supporters of antisemitism. Rodnoverie is a popular religion among Russian skinheads. These skinheads, however, do not usually practice their religion.
Historian Dmitry Shlapentokh wrote that, as in Europe,
neo-paganism in Russia pushes some of its adherents to antisemitism.
This antisemitism is closely related to negative attitudes towards
Asians, and this emphasis on racial factors can lead neo-pagans to
neo-Nazism. The tendency of neo-pagans to antisemitism is a logical
development of the ideas of neo-paganism and imitation of the Nazis, and
is also a consequence of a number of specific conditions of modern
Russian politics. Unlike previous regimes, the modern Russian political
regime, as well as the ideology of the middle class, combines support
for Orthodoxy with philosemitism
and a positive attitude towards Muslims. These features of the regime
contributed to the formation of specific views of neo-Nazi neo-pagans,
which are represented to a large extent among the socially unprotected
and marginalized Russian youth.
In their opinion, power in Russia was usurped by a cabal of
conspirators, including hierarchs of the Orthodox Church, Jews, and
Muslims. Contrary to external differences, it is believed that these
forces have united in their desire to maintain power over the Russian
"Aryans".
After the re-establishment of the multi-party system in Serbia in 1990, multiple right-wing movements and parties began getting popularity from which the Serbian Radical Party was the most successful. Vojislav Šešelj,
who founded the party, promoted popular notions of "international
conspiracy against the Serbs" during the 1990s which gained him
popularity in the 1992 and 1997 election. During the 1990s, SRS has been also described as neofascist due to their vocal support of ethnic ultranationalism and irredentism. Its popularity went into decline after the 2008 election when its acting leader Tomislav Nikolić seceded from the party to form the Serbian Progressive Party. Besides SRS, during the 2000s multiple neofascist and Neo-Nazi movements began getting popular, such as Nacionalni stroj, Obraz and 1389 Movement. Dveri,
an organization turned political party, was also a prominent promoter
of far-right content, and they were mainly known for their clerical-fascist, socially conservative and anti-Western stances. Since 2019, the far-right Serbian Party Oathkeepers has gained popularity mainly due to their ultranationalist views, including the openly neofascist Leviathan Movement.
Slovenia
There are multiple groups and organisations within Slovenia which are or have been engaged in far-right political activity, and right-wing extremism.
Their political activity has traditionally opposed and targeted
socially progressive policies, and minorities (in particular; the LGBT
community, and ethnic minorities like the Roma and immigrants (particularly those from the Southern Balkans), and espoused traditional ultraconservative and reactionary views and values. More recently, a rise in new, incipient alt-right groups has been noted, particularly as a reaction to the European migrant crisis.
Spain
The history of the far-right in Spain dates back to at least the 1800s and refers to any manifestation of far-right politics in Spain. Individuals and organizations associated with the far-right in Spain often employ reactionarytraditionalism, religious fundamentalism, corporate Catholicism, and fascism
in their ideological practice. In the case of Spain, according to
historian Pedro Carlos González Cuevas, the predominance of Catholicism
played an essential role in the suppression of external political
innovations such as Social Darwinism, positivism, and vitalism in Spanish far-right politics.
Switzerland
The Swiss People's Party, one of the leading right-wing parties in Switzerland, is widely described as far-right.
With the decline of the British Empire
becoming inevitable, British far-right parties turned their attention
to internal matters. The 1950s had seen an increase in immigration to
the UK from its former colonies, particularly India, Pakistan, the
Caribbean and Uganda. Led by John Bean and Andrew Fountaine, the BNP opposed the admittance of these people to the UK. A number of its rallies such as one in 1962 in Trafalgar Square ended in race riots.
After a few early successes, the party got into difficulties and was
destroyed by internal arguments. In 1967 it joined forces with John Tyndall and the remnants of Chesterton's League of Empire Loyalists to form Britain's largest far-right organization, the National Front (NF). The BNP and the NF supported extreme loyalism in Northern Ireland, and attracted Conservative Party members who had become disillusioned after Harold Macmillan had recognized the right to independence of the African colonies and had criticized Apartheid in South Africa.
Some Northern Irish loyalist paramilitaries have links with far-right and neo-Nazi groups in Britain, including Combat 18, the British National Socialist Movement and the NF. In 2004, The Guardian reported that loyalist paramilitaries had been responsible for numerous racist attacks in loyalist areas. During the 1970s, the NF's rallies became a regular feature of British politics. Election results remained strong in a few working-class
urban areas, with a number of local council seats won, but the party
never came anywhere near winning representation in parliament.
Since the 1970s, the NF's support has been in decline whilst Nick Griffin and the current British National Party
(BNP) grew in popularity. Around the turn of the 21st century, the BNP
won a number of council seats. At its peak in the late 2000s, the party
had 54 local council seats, one seat in the London Assembly, two seats in the European Parliament, and were the official opposition in the Barking and Dagenham London Borough Council. The party received almost a million votes in the 2009 European Parliament elections, and contested the majority of UK parliamentary seats in the 2010 general election. The party's membership was 12,632 and its financial resources were an estimated £1,983,947. The BNP would record their highest ever vote in a general election with
half a million or 1.9% of the popular vote. This is the highest ever
vote for a British Far-right party.
By the early 2010s the BNP saw its support and membership quickly
collapse due to internal divisions caused by a disappointing
performance in the 2010 elections. Griffin was ousted as leader in 2014
after losing his European Parliament seat, and since then the party has
been in terminal decline under the leadership of Adam Walker.
A number of breakaway groups have been established by former members of the BNP, such as Britain First by ex-councillor Paul Golding, the British Democrats by ex-MEP and leadership candidateAndrew Brons, as well as Patriotic Alternative by Mark Collett. UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage claimed that his party absorbed much of the BNP's former voters during their electoral peak in the early 2010s. The party was accused of shifting towards far-right, anti-Islam politics under the leadership of Paul Nuttall and Gerard Batten during its decline in the late 2010s. Anti-Islam activist and former UKIP leadership candidateAnne Marie Waters established the far-right For Britain Movement,
which gained a small number of ex-BNP councillors. It was deregistered
in 2022, and subsequently a large portion of prominent far-right
activists began coalescing around the British Democrats, which
(following UKIP's loss of its few councillors on 4 May 2023, leaving it
with only a few parish and town councillors) quickly established itself
as the UK's only far-right party with any electoral representation.
Coming to prominence in Sydney with the formation of the New Guard (1931) and the Centre Party (1933), the far right has played a part in Australian political discourse since the second world war. These proto-fascist groups were monarchist, anti-communist and authoritarian in nature. Early far-right groups were followed by the explicitly fascist Australia First Movement (1941). The far right in Australia went on to acquire more explicitly racial
connotations during the 1960s and 1970s, morphing into self-proclaimed Nazi, fascist and antisemitic movements, organizations that opposed non-white and non-Christian immigration such as the neo-NaziNational Socialist Party of Australia (1967) and the militant white supremacist group National Action (1982).
A small number of far-right organizations have existed in New Zealand since World War II, including the Conservative Front, the New Zealand National Front and the National Democrats Party.[428][429] Far-right parties in New Zealand lack significant support, with their protests often dwarfed by counter protest. After the Christchurch mosque shootings in 2019, the National Front "publicly shut up shop" and largely went underground like other far-right groups.
The Nationalist Vanua Tako Lavo Party was a far-right political party which advocated Fijian ethnic nationalism. In 2009, party leader Iliesa Duvuloco
was arrested for breaching the military regime's emergency laws by
distributing pamphlets calling for an uprising against the military
regime. In January 2013, the military regime introduced regulations that essentially de-registered the party.
The development of a Pan-European identity among far-right members of the European parliament has been claimed.
Islamic extremism
Some Islamic extremists view Islam superior to all other ideologies and non-Muslims as inferior. Some Islamic extremism can be seen as far-right, and can have some social acceptance in some countries. Dhimmi refers to the inferior status of non-Muslims in some historic Islamic states.
A number of far-right internet pages and forums are focused on and
frequented by the far right. These include Stormfront and Iron March.
Far-right internet movements gained popularity and notoriety online in 2012, and this has not stopped. In the United States, they gained many followers during the 2016 presidential election, the time after the election during Obama's last months in office in 2016, and in 2017.
Stormfront is the oldest and most prominent neo-Nazi website, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center and other media organizations as the "murder capital of the internet". In August 2017, Stormfront was taken offline for just over a month when its registrar seized its domain name due to complaints that it promoted hatred and that some of its members were linked to murder. The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law claimed credit for the action after advocating for Stormfront's web host, Network Solutions, to enforce its Terms of Service agreement which prohibits users from using its services to incite violence.
Iron March was a fascist web forum founded in 2011 by Russian
nationalist Alexander "Slavros" Mukhitdinov. An unknown individual
uploaded a database of Iron March users to the Internet Archive in November 2019 and multiple neo-Nazi users were identified, including an ICE detention center captain and several active members of the United States Armed Forces.As of mid 2018, the Southern Poverty Law Center linked Iron March to nearly 100 murders. Mukhitdinov remained a murky figure at the time of the leaks.
The Terrorgram community on Telegram is a network of Telegram channels and accounts that subscribe to and promote militant accelerationism. Terrorgram channels are neofascist
in ideology, and regularly share instructions and manuals on how to
carry out acts of racially motivated violence and anti-government,
anti-authority terrorism. In 2021, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), an international
think-tank, exposed more than two hundred neo-Nazi pro-terrorism
telegram channels that make up the Terrorgram network, many of which
contained instructions to build weapons and bombs.
From 2013 through 2022 75% of extremist killings in the U.S. were caused by right-wing perpetrators. From 2022 through 2024, all 61 political killings were committed by right-wing extremists.
Right-wing terrorism is terrorism motivated by a variety of far right ideologies and beliefs, including anti-communism, neo-fascism, neo-Nazism, racism, xenophobia and opposition to immigration. This type of terrorism has been sporadic, with little or no international cooperation. Modern right-wing terrorism first appeared in western Europe in the
1980s and it first appeared in Eastern Europe following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Right-wing terrorists aim to overthrow governments and replace them with nationalist or fascist-oriented governments. The core of this movement includes neo-fascist skinheads, far-right hooligans,
youth sympathizers and intellectual guides who believe that the state
must rid itself of foreign elements in order to protect rightful
citizens. However, they usually lack a rigid ideology.
According to Cas Mudde,
far-right terrorism and violence in the West have been generally
perpetrated in recent times by individuals or groups of individuals "who
have at best a peripheral association" with politically relevant
organizations of the far right. Nevertheless, Mudde follows, "in recent
years far-right violence has become more planned, regular, and lethal,
as terrorists attacks in Christchurch (2019), Pittsburgh (2018), and Norway (2011) show."
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United States
Germany
United Kingdom
France
Italy
Spain
Canada
Poland
Australia
Netherlands
Belgium
Czech Republic
Portugal
Hungary
Sweden
Austria
Switzerland
Denmark
Finland
Slovakia
Norway
New Zealand
Croatia
Lithuania
Slovenia
Estonia
Luxembourg
Malta
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