The rise of the intercontinental populist right

While cooperation between populist parties on the right has increased since 2014 through their participation in European Parliament groups, a more recent phenomenon has been the rise of nationalist populist cooperation across continents. This has largely been fuelled by the growing links at youth wing and senior party levels between US Republicans and European nationalist populists. However, we have also seen the participation at international right-wing populist events of representatives from countries such as India and Israel. Although the reasons for cooperation between parties and likeminded associations within the European Union have been studied by researchers, those underpinning intercontinental cooperation have received much less attention. This paper therefore asks two questions: What does nationalist populist intercontinental cooperation consist of? Why do they cooperate? To answer them, it uses interviews with European and non-European nationalist populist actors from youth wings, senior parties, and relevant associations, all of whom cooperate across continents. The paper shows that cooperation reflects not only the conviction among populists of the right that they are now facing transnational challenges which require a concerted, transnational response, but also the belief that, by cooperating internationally, they are finally beginning to catch up with the left which has (allegedly) done so far better than them.