This month, a reader e-mailed to question the use of the term “far-right” in news articles. Who defined this term, and does it not convey an editorial opinion rather than fact?
The reader was referring to coverage of the European Union elections, which took place June 6 through 9. Indeed, “far-right” has appeared in headlines, reported news, analysis, explainers and opinion pieces in The Globe, as in other news media. But how is it different from “hard-right,” “extreme-right,” “alt-right” or just plain “right-wing?”
“That’s a really, really good question and I struggle with it myself,” said The Globe’s European bureau chief, Eric Reguly, who covered the EU elections.
“I do think that in Canada and the United States, readers in general are not used to the subtleties of left-, middle and right-wing parties. There are many more variations on this in Europe.” Americans have a two-party system – Democrats and Republicans – while Canadians have four major parties, so “we’re a bit more used to the subtleties on the spectrum, but not nearly as much as Europeans are. Most European parliaments are multi-party parliaments; almost all governments are coalition governments, except Britain’s, which is a conservative majority since the last election – though it could become a coalition after the election in July.”
It’s a complex political ecosystem that Eric said has experienced “a wholesale shift to the right.”
That may explain why the reader who contacted me has the sense he is reading “far-right” more often: because more parties are right-wing. But that doesn’t mean journalists have applied the term accurately.
As Eric pointed out: “The right-wing parties are certainly not homogenous. You have the term populist. Nativist. Neo-fascist. Hard right. Centre right. Radical right. And they all mean different things depending on which political scientist or strategist you talk to.”
There is no standard nomenclature for these terms, and The Globe and Mail’s Style Book, the document that provides guidance for the use of language in Globe editorial content, doesn’t define what is meant by far-right. (It does, however, include an entry for “alt-right,” which my predecessor Sylvia Stead wrote about in 2016. The Style Book states: “The term alt-right refers to a collection of groups or individuals espousing racist, fascist or white-supremacist ideologies. We should avoid this term as much as possible. If we must use it, in a quote, for example, we should provide a definition of the term.”)
The Qatar-headquartered Al-Jazeera news network in 2017 published what it called “a brief dictionary” of terms used online by the American far-right that, ironically, does not define the phrase “far-right” itself.
So, it isn’t surprising that the use of “right” as a political descriptor has been inconsistent. For example, the New York Times has described Alberta Premier Danielle Smith as “far-right,” while a Toronto Star opinion piece said she is “playing to the most extreme wing of the UCP party.” In a Calgary Sun interview, Ms. Smith called herself a “caring conservative.” An April Globe and Mail Opinion piece referred to her as “a right-wing ideologue”; however, the news team consciously avoids using such labels, The Globe’s deputy national editor Mark Iype, who’s based in Edmonton, told me in an e-mail, “Smith is an elected politician with an established (not fringe) conservative party, and we tend to describe policies rather than her or her government.”
When is it correct to use “far-right,” then? And how can voters – the readers for whom journalists report stories – know what is meant by the term?
“I don’t believe there is a single, standard definition of ‘far right,’ or ‘extreme right’ among political scientists and historians,” York University politics professor emeritus Stephen Newman told me in an e-mail. “That said, I think most scholars who study conservatism would agree that the far right or extreme right is at the margin of what we think of as normal politics. What places them at the margin is a rejection of the norms that serve to regulate conventional political behavior. Thus, for example, normal politics eschews the use of violence against opponents. The extreme right, like the extreme left, sees violence as a permissible and perhaps even a necessary tool of effecting radical change.”
The distinction, then, between right-wing and far-right or extreme-right, “is respect for democratic norms and institutions as a rule of law,” Dr. Newman continued over the phone. Political opponents operating under these norms will express disagreement and battle for leadership while still sharing a commitment to the framework of a liberal democracy.
When reporting on politicians, Dr. Newman suggested reporters might “do what political scientists and historians do, and that is set out their definitions before they tell their story. … When we call someone right, or we say someone’s on the right, we mean the following things. And you list your criteria.”
That last part is especially important, given that politicians’ ideologies and actions are likely to shift.
“In Italy, where I live,” Eric said, “Giorgia Meloni … is routinely described in even the Italian press, but more so the international press, as ‘hard right.’ I might disagree with that – in fact, I do disagree with that in the sense that, since she’s been elected, she has shown pro-NATO, anti-Russia, pro-EU strategies and policies. She is not rocking the boat in the European Union. Now, she is harder to the right in Italy on LGBTQ+ rights, on media freedoms, on immigration. She’s definitely farther to the right in Italy but in her foreign policy I would call her a solid centrist, and I think overall she has shifted to the centre right, though you don’t see that expression used with her very much.”
“The location of the centre, the left or the right in politics itself can float,” Prof. Newman agrees. “Politics can move toward the left, it can move toward the right. So, where the centre is is not necessarily going to be stable.”
Sandra E. Martin