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“The far right is defeated all the time. Trump was defeated. Bolsonaro was defeated. Viktor Orbán was just defeated. PiS was defeated. [India’s nationalist Prime minister Narendra] Modi will be defeated at a certain point in time”: for Cas Mudde, one of the leading scholars of the European far right, the decisive question is not whether authoritarian or radical-right forces can be beaten at the ballot box. It is what happens afterwards.
“The question is indeed, is that enough? And clearly it is not because many of them come back,” he said at a public event organised by the NGO Defend Democracy in Brussels.
For Mudde, the far right is not only an electoral threat to be contained. It is also the symptom of a deeper failure of mainstream politics. Voters throw out governments they no longer trust, then return to the very forces they had already rejected, because the alternatives have failed to learn. “We vote in the far right because we are very unhappy. And then we are unhappy with the far right and we go back to the people we were unhappy with, who seem not to really have thought too much about why everyone was unhappy,” he summarises.
Liberal democracy’s problem is therefore not only the strength of its enemies. It is the weakness of its defenders. “If you look at it from the perspective that the far right wins because the mainstream fails, then the key problem is the mainstream that fails,” he argued. “Until the mainstream not only delivers but also inspires, I don't think that these defeats are much more than temporary interruptions.”
MAGA’s threat to Europe
One of Mudde’s sharpest warnings concerns the United States – not simply because Donald Trump’s politics destabilise alliances, but because the current American right, in his view, has developed an active ideological interest in changing Europe.
“Trump 1 was uninterested in Europe. And people thought that was a problem. And that is nothing compared to what the problem is today,” he said. “Today the Trump administration broadly is interested in Europe. And actively wants to change Europe.”
Mudde argues that Europe, however imperfectly, still represents an aspiration towards an integrated liberal-democratic system. That is precisely what the Trumpist right opposes. He therefore sees the United States, in its current political configuration, as a more direct threat to European liberal democracy than China. In his view, “China doesn't care whether Europe is liberal democratic or not. China just cares about economics. The US actively cares about it. Like [Vladimir] Putin does.”
The difference, he suggested, is that the Russian leader wants Europe to be “chaotic” and “inefficient”, whereas the American right wants Europe to become more like the United States it is trying to build. According to Mudde, the Trump administration's national security strategy explicitly identifies an integrated, liberal democratic Europe as a system to be changed. This has concrete consequences, Mudde said, pointing to pressure on European politicians “to normalise relations with far-right forces, including Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).”
Germany’s Brandmauer problem
Mudde’s argument is deliberately uncomfortable. He does not advocate governing with the AfD. But he warns that a Brandmauer – Germany’s version of a cordon sanitaire excluding coalitions with far-right parties – cannot function in the same way when a far-right party reaches very high levels of support in some regions: “If you have a far-right party that gets 40% and you institute a Brandmauer… what you're going to get is the same government in perpetuity, if you're lucky.”
For Mudde, the priority is not moral self-comfort but the defence of liberal democracy. “Obviously, from a moral, ideological point of view, I would like to exclude the far-right. But the most important thing is liberal democracy.” If parties refuse to discuss in advance the conditions under which they would or would not cooperate with the far right, he warned, “they may eventually do so anyway, but without clear red lines.”
He therefore argues for an open conversation about the conditions under which limited cooperation might be possible, while drawing firm democratic limits. This does not mean accepting the far right’s worldview. It means distinguishing between policies that are harsh or objectionable and politics that directly undermines liberal democracy.
‘From a moral, ideological point of view, I would like to exclude the far-right. But the most important thing is liberal democracy’
“Having very tight borders is, in and by itself, not at odds with liberal democracy. Having a dehumanizing narrative around it is.” That distinction, he says, is decisive – and moderate right-wing parties, the AfD's most likely partners, need to confront it openly rather than let it happen by default.
A grand coalition formed only to exclude the AfD would also be a mistake, Mudde argued. “If you have a Große Koalition, a grand coalition, to exclude them, it cannot be a negative coalition. If the only point is to keep the AfD out, they will win the next election.” The alternative, he argued, must be a positive democratic project: “You have to have a story about it, you have to know what liberal democracy is, and how you strengthen it.”
Normalisation starts in everyday life
Normalisation, however, is not only a matter of governments or parties. Mudde also described it as a pattern of everyday compromise: invitations accepted, panels shared, ceremonies attended, awkward conversations avoided.
“Most people understand and speak a lot about how strong the far right has become. How mainstream the far right has become,” he said. “But then even though they know that the far right is around us and is now part of our daily lives, we kind of are exactly the same.”
The contradiction is obvious, Mudde continued: “Even though we all the time tell parties to not work together with the far right, we do work with the far right or we share panels with the far right.” It becomes especially uncomfortable when people have known each other for years, when colleagues or acquaintances have shifted politically, and when naming that shift risks personal conflict. “They have changed, it is an uncomfortable conversation, so let's just not talk about it. I think that is a bad choice.”
Mudde does not pretend that individual boycotts transform power relations. “At an individual level it really doesn't matter,” he said. But he still sees them as politically meaningful acts of coherence. “You don't need to have principles, but it helps.”
The media myth about young men
One of the sharpest moments of the talk concerned the dominant narrative around youth radicalisation. Mudde methodically dismantled the media myth that masculinist influencers Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate have converted a generation of young men to the hard right. “Poll after poll shows that young men, however defined, are still slightly more progressive, inclusive, whatever you want to call it, than older men.”
The real story, according to Mudde, is the political movement of young women. “The story is actually not [about] young men. The story is [about] young women.” Young women, he argued, have moved much further to the left than older women, creating the largest gender gap in values among younger generations. But politics and media still focus overwhelmingly on men.
Priorities differ too. Young people place issues such as housing at the top of their concerns. Women are less likely than men to prioritise immigration and security. Yet the political agenda remains dominated by what Mudde calls “the priorities and to a certain extent the frames of old men.”
That critique applies not only to the right. “Social democratic parties are obsessed with allegedly winning back the far-right vote, even though there is no evidence that they mostly lost to the far-right,” he said. In his view, parties of the left often chase older, male, conservative voters while neglecting young women whose values are already progressive.
The demographic argument is blunt: “They die a lot earlier than the young women. So long-term strategy is not particularly smart. But also, the young women actually have progressive values. You can be yourself and win them. Those old white men, you have to pretend to be someone else to win them.” Mudde then singled out outgoing British Labour Prime minister Keir Starmer as “the worst example,” chasing the Reform UK vote even though it is “by and large the polar opposite of young women.”
A left young people can trust
This generational break is particularly damaging for social democracy. Older voters may still associate social democratic parties with the creation of the welfare state. Younger voters, Mudde argued, often associate them with austerity.
“When you think about the Social Democratic Party, for me or people, let's say, over 45, you associate the Social Democratic Parties with creating a welfare state,” he said. “People under 35 associate Social Democratic Parties with austerity. Right? That will not go.”
Even if these parties rediscover a more social-democratic programme, trust may not return quickly. Political identities are formed early. A generation that learned to associate mainstream centre-left parties with cuts and technocratic compromise may not be easily won back. “When they're 35 and the Social Democratic Parties actually is social democratic again, there's a fair chance that these people will still think, yeah, but we know what you do when you're in power.”
A generation that learned to associate mainstream centre-left parties with cuts and technocratic compromise may not be easily won back
This explains Mudde’s interest in politicians who are ideologically clear without being politically naïve. He cited Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Zohran Mamdani and, in Europe, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez as figures who in different ways speak from a recognisable political position. What matters is not purity, but refusing to disappear into the centre. “What I like about him is to a certain extent what I really like about Mamdani is that they're unapologetically progressive they're unapologetically non-mainstream.”
Start close to home
Mudde offers no “silver bullet”. Indeed, part of his message is that the scale of the challenge can be paralysing. The far right and its allies have money, media infrastructure, algorithms and, in some cases, state power. Trying to take all of that on at once can lead only to exhaustion.
Instead, he argued for local action, electoral engagement and difficult conversations within one’s own circles. “Young people should not ignore or reject electoral politics. Even if it doesn't work for you, it is the most powerful element in politics.” But he also warned against limiting mobilisation to political parties. Change can be built around them, especially at the local level.
The hardest work is often the least glamorous. “Research shows that if you speak to someone who you don't know, who is politically from the other side, and you bring politics up, they dig in.”
Social media rewards strong statements delivered to people who already agree. It rarely reaches those who might still be persuaded. “The people that we can actually somewhat reach are people close to us. But those are the most awkward conversations.”
Mudde’s warning to Europe is ultimately simple. The far right will not disappear because it loses an election. It will return, in the same form or another, as long as mainstream parties fail to understand the grievances that brought it to power, and as long as democracy is defended only as a barrier rather than offered as a project.
The task, then, is not just to keep extremists out. It is to make liberal democracy worth believing in again.
| Hungary, Romania, Poland: The far right is beaten, not gone The far right can be beaten at the ballot box. Hungary, Romania and Poland show why that is not the same as defeating the politics that brought to power. In Hungary, Péter Magyar’s sweeping victory in the 12 April 2026 general election ended Viktor Orbán’s 16 years in power. But the far-right threat has not disappeared. Orbánism remains a political and social inheritance: on refugees, LGBT+ rights and Ukraine, it is still difficult to break with the positions imposed for years by Viktor Orbán and Fidesz. While Magyar’s Tisza party is pursuing a slow and partial opening on these issues, the far-right Mi Hazánk party occupies a peculiar position. With 5.88% of the vote, it is now one of the forces trying to capture Eurosceptic and anti-establishment voters — and to position itself as a potential kingmaker. Romania offers a similar warning. The pro-European Nicușor Dan won the 18 May 2025 presidential election, defeating the far-right candidate George Simion. But Simion had won the first round by a clear margin, after benefiting from the support of Călin Georgescu, winner of the annulled first round in November 2024. Georgescu’s candidacy was blocked by the Constitutional Court, as was that of another far-right figure, Diana Șoșoacă. In the run-off, Dan benefited from what Romanian commentators call the “lesser evil” reflex: voters mobilising less out of enthusiasm than to block a candidate they feared. Today, Simion's Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) leads the polls, with support ranging from 30% to 40%. Amid tensions between Social Democrats and Liberals after the fall of the Bolojan government, AUR has become harder to ignore. In Poland, Donald Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition (KO) came to power in October 2023, after eight years of rule by the right-populist Law and Justice party (PiS). But the coalition’s promise of democratic renewal has been slowed by internal divisions, disappointed voters and presidential vetoes blocking judicial and social reforms. The decline in support for Tusk’s government stems from this gridlock: the right can still present him as ineffective, while liberal voters grow frustrated with a democratic renaissance that has yet to fully arrive. |
🤝 This article was produced as part of the PULSE collaborative project. Boróka Parazka (Eurologus/HVG, Hungary) and Sebastian Pricop (HotNews, Romania) contributed to it.
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