Mainstreaming of the Far Right: Anti-Woke Backlash or the Return of History?

This article offers a conceptual reassessment of “mainstreaming,” a term widely used to describe the movement of far-right ideas and actors from the political margins into dominant political arenas. Although scholars broadly agree that the far right is ideologically defined by anti-egalitarianism, nativism, and authoritarianism, the notion of the “mainstream” itself remains ambiguous, variously referring to centrism, dominant parties, or electoral success. This conceptual vagueness has produced an imprecise and fragmented literature in which mainstreaming is used to describe disparate phenomena ranging from media normalization and diffusion of far-right ideas to commercialization of far-right symbols, shifts in public opinion, and the adoption of far-right positions by mainstream parties. Such inconsistency obscures what mainstreaming entails, how it unfolds, and what its implications are for liberal democracy. Synthesizing this scattered body of research through a scoping review of 2,912 articles on the far right and mainstreaming, the article advances a minimal and analytically precise definition of mainstreaming and identifies three interrelated forms: 1) moderation of far-right actors as they move toward the mainstream; 2) radicalization of mainstream parties through the uptake of far-right ideas; and 3) radicalization of public opinion as populations shift rightward. Bringing these processes together reveals mainstreaming as a relational and potentially mutually reinforcing dynamic rather than a set of isolated developments, providing a clearer foundation for empirical assessment of the far right’s growing influence and its consequences for democratic resilience.