Introduction: Populism and far-right. Trends in Europe

These contributions, the fruit of original and intense research, helped frame vibrant debates during the February- May 2022 seminars hosted by the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, offering lenses through which to interpret phenomena that are current but with distant origins. What emerges is the observation that the European far right, albeit manifested in a rich variety of regional forms, has been capable of going increasingly ‘mainstream’, and that the phenomenon taking place in Europe is merely part of a much broader global picture. The impressive online generation of ‘truths’ by media vehicles, the pervasive and widespread use of social media to mobilize the electorate, the increasingly fundamental association with the environmentalist cause, and the ideological flexibility and opportunism of populism: all of these are contributing factors in a massive sanctioning and normalization of what was once solely associated with the extreme-right fringes of the political spectrum, to such an extent that it has become almost impossible to distinguish what is far right from what is not.