Talk:Radical right (Europe)

Scope of the article
David Art's book is mentioned in the article, so I think a good starting point should be what he wrote: "In this book, I use "far right" as an umbrella term for any political party, voluntary association, or extraparliamentary movement that differentiates itself from the mainstream right...."Radical right" refers to a specific type of far right party that began to emerge in the late 1970s....[T]here has been a convergence around the term in the literature...." (Inside the Radical Right: The Development of Anti-Immigrant Parties in Western Europe (2011), p. 10) He then says his definition draws from Betz (1994) and Mudde (2007).

My first comment is that since Art says there is convergence on use of the term we should not use in text attribution. We should just acknowledge that while there is no consistency on terminology, the term normally refers to the wave of right-wing parties that began to emerge in the 1970s. We should only use in-text attribution when someone says something original. For example Art refers to Betz when he provides Betz's explanation of why these parties are right-wing.

Second, we need to ensure that the article is about a specific topic, in this case the parties and groups that began to emerge in the late 70s, and include only comments about these parties where the author is clearly referring to them. For example, some writers use the term radical right to refer to parties such as the BNP but not UKIP. Other writers may not use the term radical right but may call them "third wave" of the Extreme Right Party family, as Mudde did in his 1996 article "The War of Words Defining the Extreme Right Party Family." Incidentally we should have an article that family too. It's definition is similar to Art's use of "far right", although that term is more usually used for the more right-wing of the Extreme Right Parties, such as the BNP.

Incidentally, some editors complain that we categorize right-wing parties using left-right terminology. "Left and right mean different things in different places and different times." "The terms left and right are not longer meaningful." "Only left-wingers use the terms left and right." "Why don't we have articles about far left, etc." To them I say that the extreme right, unlike the Left, never adopted terms to describe their ideologies as other parties did - liberal, Trotskyist, green party, etc. So observers have with difficulty developed the best terms they could.

TFD (talk) 18:03, 26 June 2015 (UTC)


 * I think that those are some very fair points, TFD. It's good to see another editor taking an interest in this newly created article. Midnightblueowl (talk) 18:08, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Changes to WP:LEAD
I've made some changes to the leading section in this article. Firstly, there were zero sources cited, which I've changed or added tags. Additionally, this paragraph seemed out of place: "Also part of this milieu are extra-parliamentary right-wing groups. These consist of right-wing extremist groups such as white power skinheads, as well as organisations devoted to scientific racism and Holocaust denial." , as it's unsourced, clumsily implies that those who engage in scientific racism are grouped into extra-paramilitary groups. I propose a similar template to this article; that is, a 'Criticism' section, or some sort of section that describes the more controversial aspects of the issue at hand. If this part is re-instated to the intro section then I suggest it needs to be reworded first. Phatwa (talk) 09:24, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Citations aren't required in the lede given that the lede sections are supposed to (accurately) summarise the contents of the main article (and it is there that full citations certainly are needed). Some articles do include citations; most (FAs) don't. Generally we avoid Criticism sections too, but rather try to integrate criticisms into other sections of the article. Midnightblueowl (talk) 20:02, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

PEGIDA
I'm not sure where the claim of "far-right" group comes from, but the majority of the sources that call them this are either biased towards the left, or pro-immigration. Anyhow I'm not sure if an anti-immigration interest group is on the same level as neo-Nazi skinheads, let alone be representative of the European "far-right".

Sincerely, --86.81.201.94 (talk) 10:59, 18 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure that I understand; this article refers to PEGIDA as "radical right", rather than "far right". Midnightblueowl (talk) 22:01, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

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Connections and Links
The article says:

"Such groups often believe that Western governments are under the control of a Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG), thus expressing explicitly anti-Semitic views."

Both the main parties in the UK are led by people who self-declare as Zionists. How can it be "explicitly antisemitic" to express such views, if the leaders of the parties themselves say they are Zionist?

I've never heard the expression Zionist Occupation Government; the word "occupation" implies the use of armed force, which is obviously laughable. But I propose softening this language:

"Such groups often believe that Western governments are under the control of a Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG), implying views that are deemed anti-Semitic according to the IHRA."

MrDemeanour (talk) 14:07, 9 November 2022 (UTC)


 * As I pointed out in my first post, the article does not have a main topic, but lists examples of where the term has been used to describe various topics, most of which are not specific to Europe. The source used for the definitions doesn't even use the term radical right. The Zionist Occupation Government conspiracy theory incidentally is a well known conspiracy theory. TFD (talk) 14:34, 9 November 2022 (UTC)