The label “extreme right” is applied too readily to parties such as Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), Restore Britain and Rassemblement National. Following scholars such as Matthijs Rooduijn and Jacob Ravndal, we should clearly distinguish between the radical right and the extreme right. A movement becomes extremist only when it seeks to abolish democracy and accepts or encourages violence.
By Paul Cliteur
Tougher immigration controls, national sovereignty, and criticism of European integration are not, in themselves, extremist. Careless terminology obstructs political debate and can also have far-reaching legal consequences, including surveillance or a party ban. Political parties should therefore be classified as extreme right only based on demonstrably anti-democratic and violent characteristics.
“The extreme right in Europe is no longer confined to the political margins. In France, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National has become one of the country’s dominant political forces. In Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has transformed itself from an outsider party into a major electoral force.”
So writes Jan Bryxí on the Freethinkers International website. Similar commentary can be found almost everywhere. It expresses concern about the rise of the “extreme right”. But what exactly is meant by that term? Bryxí continues by asking: “What happens if these movements eventually gain control of their respective governments?”
The consequences he lists turn out to be considerably less alarming than the label suggests:
In short, these could be highly beneficial consequences. Major political change is indeed needed. Immigration policy does need to become stricter. National borders should matter more. European integration plainly faces immense challenges, and it is better to confront them than to ignore them. And who can deny that relations with Russia are currently far from satisfactory?
Yet this is rarely the conclusion drawn when parties such as Alternative für Deutschland, Rassemblement National or Restore Britain are discussed. Instead, commentators paint a dark picture and routinely suggest that these parties would lead their countries towards ruin. Bryxí even warns of the threat of “dictatorship” if the advance of the “extreme right” continues.
What is happening here? The alarmism begins with the decision to describe these parties as “extreme”. Why extreme? Why not simply right-wing? Or “sensible right”, “forgotten right” or “consistent right”?
If this is the programme of the “extreme right”, then the “extreme right” may in fact offer a useful correction to political movements that have helped create the present disorder.
What is the danger of the extreme right?
To answer that question, we must first establish what “extreme right” means. I would argue that an orientation towards violence is its defining feature. The extreme right tolerates violence, encourages it or commits it.
Matthijs Rooduijn, associate professor at the University of Amsterdam, expresses this distinction well. He separates radical-right parties from extreme-right parties and does so against the background of another concept: nativism.
Nativism is an exclusionary form of nationalism. It emphasises a nation’s own identity and defines it in opposition to outsiders, whom Rooduijn identifies as immigrants or people of another religion or skin colour. Radical-right and extreme-right parties are both nativist. There is nevertheless a decisive difference: extreme-right parties seek to abolish democracy and do not shrink from violence.
Rooduijn’s terminological recommendation deserves to be followed. Two features characterise an extreme-right party:
Rooduijn cites Nazis and fascists, including Greece’s Golden Dawn, as examples of the extreme right.
Within this typology, the Dutch PVV, Germany’s AfD and France’s Rassemblement National should logically be described as radical right rather than extreme right. They do not state that they wish to abolish democracy, nor do they encourage or use violence.
Why the distinction matters
The distinction between the radical right and the extreme right matters because it helps prevent right-wing parties from being excluded from the democratic process. Democracy is a system of free elections in which parties with sharply differing programmes can compete to govern. Left-wing parties will naturally dislike competition from the right, and they may be tempted to press for their rivals’ exclusion — for example, through a party ban.
How can that be achieved? By claiming that an ordinary right-wing or radical-right party is in fact extreme right. Parties that seek to abolish democracy and are prepared to use violence can legitimately be excluded from democratic competition. Much contemporary left-wing political activity therefore consists, in my view, of wrongly accusing radical-right parties of extremism.
Politics today has to a considerable degree become an exercise in rhetoric — above all, the rhetoric of recasting radical-right parties as extreme right. This helps explain the current obsession with right-wing extremism. It serves a political purpose: radical-right parties can be pushed out of the system without any serious debate about their proposals.
Instead of discussing how many asylum seekers or immigrants a country can absorb, critics accuse the radical-right participant of wanting to exclude people because of their skin colour. If that accusation sticks, much criticism of immigration can then be portrayed as “racist”. Racism may attract criminal sanctions; those who commit crimes can in turn be depicted as disqualifying themselves from democratic participation.
Defining the extreme right
Let us return to Rooduijn’s distinction between the radical right and the extreme right. Left-wing parties have a vested interest in blurring that distinction, or in refusing to draw it at all. Radical-right parties are thereby transformed into extreme-right parties. Once a party has been given that classification, legal measures can be used against it.
This is highly relevant to Alternative für Deutschland. In Germany, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz has sought to establish that the AfD is extreme-right, a classification that could pave the way for its exclusion from the political process.
Other scholars distinguish “radical” from “extreme”
Jacob Ravndal distinguishes two approaches to extremism: “The first approach relates extremism to political opinion.… The second approach relates extremism to the means activists use in pursuing their political goals: If you support illegal violence, you are an extremist, regardless of your specific political opinions.” Ravndal endorses the second approach: “Right-wing extremism is understood as the support of using illegal violence to promote right-wing policies.”
His formulation is admirably clear: the extreme right is defined not by the substance of a position, but primarily by the means used to defend it — namely, illegal violence.
The same reasoning also allows us to define the extreme left. A party or position is extreme left when it seeks to abolish democracy and does not shrink from violence. The test is the same as for the extreme right. Antifa — ostensibly an anti-fascist resistance movement — and Stalinism may serve as examples of extreme-left currents. The historical parallels are Nazi and fascist parties on the extreme right, and anarchist and communist parties on the extreme left.
Alex P. Schmid offers further support for the definitions advanced by Rooduijn and Ravndal. Schmid quotes the Danish government’s definition: “Extremism refers to persons or groups that commit or seek to legitimise violence or other illegal acts, with reference to societal conditions that they disagree with. The term covers e.g. left-wing extremism, right-wing extremism and Islamist extremism.”
Once again, calling for a far-reaching reduction in immigration is not extremist. Nor is insisting on the right to criticise every religion, including Islam. Positions are not made extreme by their content, but by the way they are defended: through violence.
On 6 September 2026, elections will be held for the Landtag of Saxony-Anhalt, the state parliament. These are regional elections, not federal Bundestag elections.
The AfD is well ahead in current polling:
The AfD may therefore not only emerge as the largest party but could conceivably win an absolute majority of seats. Much will depend on how many smaller parties clear the five-per-cent threshold. The AfD’s lead candidate is Ulrich Siegmund. The CDU and other established parties have ruled out cooperation with the AfD.
If the AfD wins, a debate will almost certainly erupt immediately over whether it is an extreme-right party and should therefore be banned. That would be wholly unjustified. The AfD does not seek to destroy democracy, nor does it encourage or tolerate violence. It is a radical-right party, not an extreme-right one.
Anyone who reads Alice Weidel’s Widerworte: Gedanken über Deutschland (2019) can hardly conclude otherwise. These are radical-right ideas, not extreme-right ones. Weidel wants to strengthen democracy, not abolish it; she wants to combat violence, not encourage or tolerate it. Yet the press will inevitably wage a relentless campaign to push her into the extreme-right camp.
The AfD and Germany’s domestic intelligence service
On 2 May 2025, the federal Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV) classified the AfD as a whole as a “gesichert rechtsextremistische Bestrebung” — a movement whose extreme-right character the agency regarded as established.
The AfD challenged that assessment. On 26 February 2026, in interim proceedings, the Administrative Court of Cologne ruled that the BfV may not, for the time being, classify or treat the AfD as “proven extreme right”.
The BfV is Germany’s federal domestic security and intelligence agency. It monitors organisations and individuals that may threaten the democratic constitutional order, including:
The BfV comes under the Federal Ministry of the Interior. Germany’s states also have their own Landesämter für Verfassungsschutz. The BfV is not a police force: it gathers and analyses intelligence but does not, as a rule, make arrests.
According to the court, the BfV had not sufficiently demonstrated that forces hostile to the constitution were dominant within the party as a whole.
Pending a ruling in the main proceedings, the AfD’s federal legal status is therefore only that of a right-wing extremist “Verdachtsfall”, or suspected case. This means that there are sufficient indications of an extreme-right and possibly anti-constitutional orientation to justify surveillance. That status has been final since July 2025.
In short, the Verfassungsschutz did classify the AfD as demonstrably extreme right, but the court has temporarily prohibited the use of that stronger designation. The currently in force federal classification is therefore “rechtsextremistischer Verdachtsfall”, not “gesichert rechtsextremistisch”. Individual state branches may be subject to a different and more severe classification.
Radical-right politics, represented by parties such as the AfD, PVV, FVD and RN, is constantly accused of being extreme-right politics. That is unjustified and far from harmless. Once critics succeed in saddling the radical right with the extreme-right label, sanctions such as party bans come into view.
References
Ravndal, Jacob Aasland. “Thugs or Terrorists? A Typology of Right-Wing Terrorism and Violence in Western Europe.” Journal for Deradicalisation, no. 3 (2015), pp. 14–16.
Schmid, Alex P. “Conceptual Issues: Definitions, Typologies and Theories.” In Handbook of Terrorism Prevention and Preparedness. ICCT, 2021, pp. 27–28.
Weidel, Alice. Widerworte: Gedanken über Deutschland. Kulmbach: Plassen Verlag, 2019.
Paul Cliteur is the author of “The Ideology of Islamism and the Religion of Islam”, in Populist and Islamist Challenges for International Law, pp. 72–81.
