When Climate Politics Backfire: Climate Backlash and Far-Right Gains

This paper examines how climate-related mobilization reshapes far-right party strategy in Europe, arguing that both pro-climate activism and anti-climate mobilization, such as farmers’ protests, create strategic opportunities for far-right actors. In recent years, mass climate demonstrations and large-scale rural mobilization against environmental and climate regulation have increased the political salience of climate conflict across Europe. The paper argues that these protest dynamics act as political triggers, encouraging far-right parties to adapt their positioning, mobilize the climate cleavage as a wedge issue, and potentially expand their electoral appeal. Building on cleavage theory, issue-yield approaches, and research on protest–party interactions, the paper conceptualizes climate protest as a dual opportunity structure. Pro-climate mobilization can generate backlash dynamics, enabling far-right actors to delegitimize activists and reframe climate demands in terms of law-and-order concerns, cultural conflict, or economic costs. At the same time, anti-environmental or anti-climate mobilization,particularly farmers’ protests, can offer far-right parties opportunities to present themselves as defenders of groups portrayed as disproportionately affected by climate policy, linking environmental regulation to economic insecurity and urban–rural divides. Empirically, the paper focuses on European contexts in which climate contention and far-right mobilization have been particularly salient. It examines how far-right parties respond to periods of intensified protest activity and explores whether different forms of climate-related mobilization are associated with shifts in party rhetoric, political positioning, and broader patterns of electoral support. Particular attention is paid to how protest characteristics, such as scale, visibility, and actor composition, shape far-right responses across different political and institutional environments. Overall, the paper contributes to a better understanding of climate backlash as a dynamic political process, showing how climate contention interacts with far-right party behavior in multiple ways. It speaks to broader debates on the politicization of climate change, party–movement relations, and the role of populist and far-right actors in shaping conflicts around the green transition in Europe.