It is impossible not to use the word fascism when writing about the far-right landscape in Italy, both because of Italy’s history with fascism and because the term is frequently used in describing the political landscape today. While most experts agree that the foundations of fascism are authoritarian and nationalistic, there is debate about other basic characteristics, including the role of bigotry and the oppression of marginalized communities in its furtherance.

The modern Merriam-Webster definition is a “political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race (emphasis GPAHE) above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.”

The contemporary far right in Portugal can be traced back to the traditionalist reaction to the liberal revolution of 1910, which overthrew the Portuguese monarchy and replaced it with the First Portuguese Republic. Unlike many fascist regimes in the early 1900s, Portuguese reactionaries were primarily backward-looking, still admiring the monarchist era before the rise of liberal and enlightenment beliefs.

The defense of these traditionalist Portuguese values, and a rural lifestyle, was later picked up by the 20th-century dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, who expressed traditional fascist rhetoric, but in practice put in place a traditionalist, anti-modernist regime.

Bulgaria’s political history prior to the establishment of the communist regime after WWII is one of occupation and halting steps towards representative government. In the 1800s and earlier, there was the centuries-long Ottoman occupation, which ended in 1878, and gave way in the late 1800s to various German aristocrats being “elected” by somewhat representative parliaments as princes or Tsars of the Principality of Bulgaria.

As such, speaking of far-right movements in today’s terms for that period doesn’t really track given the central role of a Tsar. But the issue of Bulgarian nationalism has always been salient as the country’s independence has long been threatened due to the proximity of the Ottoman Empire and then later by Soviet dominance.

France has a very long history of far-right movements stretching back to the late 1800s motivated predominantly by antisemitism, ethnic nationalism, and religious—meaning Catholic–nationalism. Rooted in France’s history of generally conservative Catholicism, these movements portrayed Jews as a threat to Catholicism, an idea formerly enshrined in Catholic doctrine that is now officially rejected.

Other movements also historically viewed as enemies of the Church, specifically Freemasons, Protestants, and those in support of Republican forms of government, were targeted by the far right. In more recent years, immigrants, and particularly Muslims, have become anathema to the far right’s vision for the French people, which has become more overtly white supremacist and driven by propaganda rooted in the racist Great Replacement conspiracy theory.

Since the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015 and the expansion of access to abortion in recent years, the far-right scene has found foothold and is growing, with a new reactionary political party, the Irish Freedom Party established in 2018 as well as a handful of smaller groups that target immigrants and the LGBTQI community.

Many of these groups have adopted the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which argues that white populations are being intentionally displaced from their homelands, a plot often blamed on Jews or globalists.

Australia’s history of far-right and white supremacist activism, often rooted in its colonial experience, has resulted in racist policies and laws regarding the dispossession of Indigenous people, white supremacy, and xenophobic politics. This history parallels in many ways that of the American experience.

Beginning in 1901, the year its six colonies were joined together to create the Commonwealth of Australia, a self-governing and domestically sovereign entity in the British Empire, Australia passed legislation to restrict non-white immigration into the country that lasted until the legal regimes was dismantled between 1949 and 1973 (these policies were akin to the United States of America’s Immigration Act of 1924 that restricted immigration to “Nordics” until 1965).