The extreme right at the test of time between reconfiguration and persistence

Some political concepts are bound together by their nature of “polemical concepts” (Kampfbegriff). Extreme right and populism have long shared this fate. The dense theoretical production of recent decades has greatly reduced the effect of the polemical use of the term populism. The rich reflection on the ideological, strategic, and communicative dimensions of populism has helped refine the theoretical analysis of the concept on the one hand and its empirical application on the other. The same cannot be said of research on the extreme right. Despite promising attempts to isolate the study of the extreme-right from the study of right-wing populism, there remain areas of uncertainty about the use of the concepts, the associated party families, and the interaction between far-right parties and movements in contemporary democracies. Against this background, this paper aims to provide a review of the most recent investigations on the evolution of the extreme-right as an ideology and political action in historical-political terms. Can we speak of a reconfiguration of extreme-right ideas and values due to the passage of time and coexistence with populist parties and governments? Has the interplay between extreme right and movements created windows of opportunity at the political level and in the policy making? Have transformations in political communication eroded the ideological core of the extreme right or have they reinforced its original Weltanscahuung?