Introduction
Over the past two decades, Europe has witnessed an unprecedented surge in far-right political movements that have not only reshaped the political landscape but also spurred intense debates among scholars. Traditional parties, which have often been dismissed as extremist or illiberal, increasingly adopt strategies to recast themselves as moderate or centrist (Chan Reference Chan2024). This rebranding is evident in the rhetoric of leaders such as Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s current prime minister (Newth Reference Newth2024), and Alice Weidel, Head of Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) (X 2025), who present their agendas as expressions of a ‘new common sense’ rather than radical ideology (Newth and Scopellit Reference Newth and Scopelliti2025). Smaller groups across Europe also challenge established political science categories, seeking to reposition themselves within the mainstream, thereby complicating the traditional boundaries between acceptable political discourse and radical extremism (Wodak Reference Wodak2020). This dynamic creates a landscape in which the language used to describe political actors becomes itself a battleground for legitimacy and control (Samaras Reference Samaras2025).
By treating labels such as ‘hard-right’ as softening devices rather than precise descriptors, journalistic practices inadvertently strip extremist positions of their most troubling elements. Brown and Mondon (Reference Brown and Mondon2021) show that catch-all terms such as ‘populism’ work to mainstream these views by sanitising their core ideology. At the same time, Wodak (Reference Wodak2020) warns that such shameless normalisation conceals what makes the far-right truly troubling, lowering barriers to public acceptance. This effect is compounded when uncritical media outlets deploy simplistic labels and collapse distinct movements into a single narrative – Katsambekis (Reference Katsambekis2023) and Krzyżanowski and Ekström (Reference Krzyżanowski and Ekström2022) reveal how this blurring diffuses accountability. Meanwhile, hybrid-media pressures stir ontological insecurity among audiences, diverting attention from democratic erosion towards a vague, amorphous threat (Kisic Merino and Kinnvall Reference Kisic Merino and Kinnvall2023).
This interplay of euphemisation and media dynamics helps explain why attempts to portray the far-right as pariahs often backfire. Scholars such as Katsambekis (Reference Katsambekis2023) highlight how the media contribute to the far-right’s transition from fringe to centre-ground. Rather than marginalising these parties, outlets sometimes amplify their visibility through fearmongering, moral panic, and sensationalism – phenomena that Moffitt (Reference Moffitt2022) argues have actually smoothed their path into mainstream politics. And because sensational content travels so easily across traditional and social platforms, the far-right’s rhetoric gains fresh legitimacy every time it is echoed (Wodak Reference Wodak2020).
Within this climate, the term ‘hard-right’ has emerged as a preferred descriptor in many media outlets. Ostensibly, this term is intended to serve as a less provocative alternative to ‘far-right’, potentially narrowing the perceived ideological gap between mainstream conservatives and groups with more overt nationalist, xenophobic, or authoritarian tendencies. However, unlike well-established political typologies – such as the Green/Alternative/Libertarian to Traditional/Authoritarian/Nationalist (GAL-TAN) scale (Crulli Reference Crulli2024) or clear distinctions among far-right, radical right, and extreme-right ideologies – the term ‘hard-right’ remains conceptually unclear (Staender, Humprecht, and Esser Reference Staender, Humprecht and Esser2024).
This lack of conceptual clarity is not merely an academic concern – it has profound implications for public discourse and democratic accountability. Its use in media narratives contributes to a ‘snowball’ effect whereby the term proliferates without rigorous justification, ultimately obscuring the ideological distinctions between extremist and mainstream political actors (Berti, Capdevila and Moragas-Fernández Reference Berti, Capdevila and Moragas-Fernández2025; Hunger and Paxton Reference Hunger and Paxton2022). In a context where language shapes perception, such practices allow far-right groups to strategically reframe their identities. These movements can avoid the stigmatising effects of labels such as ‘far-right’ and present themselves as champions of ‘common-sense politics’ that resonate with disaffected voters (Chan Reference Chan2024; Krzyżanowski Reference Krzyżanowski2020).
Given these stakes, this article unfolds in six clear stages: First, it traces the scholarly use and origins of ‘hard-right’, exposing its conceptual ambiguity and lack of solid grounding. Second, it introduces Framing Theory and Agenda-Setting Theory as analytical lenses for understanding media labelling. Third, it details the qualitative content analysis applied to 140 articles from seven major outlets. Fourth, it examines how The Guardian, BBC, Politico, The New Statesman, The Economist, Reuters, and The Financial Times employ the ‘hard-right’ label, and then compares their approaches. Fifth, it explores potential applications of the term and the implications for political communication. Finally, it considers the wider implications for democratic discourse and situates its theoretical contribution within the scholarly literature, advocating for more precise political labelling.
Scholarly use and origins
This section seeks to evaluate the academic validity of the term ‘hard-right’. The evident scarcity of academic discourse on the hard-right suggests that its widespread application is predominantly influenced by journalistic practices, as the term continues to proliferate across various media platforms. A study by Karell, Linke, Holland et al. (Reference Karell, Linke, Holland and Hendrickson2023) illustrates the term’s nature, as they adopt it to discuss concepts of far-right activism. Their interpretation does not describe an extreme political stance (eg far-right) but instead refers to a socially and politically conservative position deemed more ‘recalcitrant’ than mainstream viewpoints. Although they examine social media content in depth, their work lacks precise definitions and fails to situate the term within recognised political science frameworks. Furthermore, the language they use and methods they employ do not make clear what is actually meant by hard-right politics.
The same article also focuses on episodes of civil unrest, including the Capitol Riots in January 2021 as a key example. Although the hard-right is mentioned, there is broad agreement that this insurrection reflected far-right extremism (Dugan and Fischer Reference Dugan and Fisher2023; Nacos and Bloch-Elkon Reference Nacos and Bloch-Elkon2024) with elements of terrorism (Jones, Doxsee, Hwang et al. Reference Jones, Doxsee, Hwang and Thompson2021; Rajendran, Sahithi, Gupta et al. Reference Rajendran, Sahithi, Gupta, Yadav, Ahirrao, Kotecha, Gaikwad, Abraham, Ahmed and Alhammad2022). Here, established academic terminology is overlooked. Karell, Linke, Holland et al. mirror the approach often seen in journalistic coverage, failing to acknowledge the seriousness of such events. Consequently, the gravity of these incidents is understated.
A comparable ideological thread is also evident in Ellis’s discussion of the rightward turn in the British Conservative party (Ellis Reference Ellis2024). The term in question is again presented as self-evident, without being defined or situated within existing scholarship, which currently lacks a broadly recognised interpretation of the term. Although members of the Conservative party have shown features resembling far-right ideologies over the past five years (Woods, Reference Woods2024; Worth Reference Worth2023), Ellis does not employ established terminology or engage with relevant scholarly literature that might strengthen his argument.
Nevertheless, Ellis proceeds to offer four characteristics to support the party’s hard-right classification: (a) a sustained fusion of free market and cultural conservatism, (b) strategic use of public opinion platforms, (c) reliance on institutional ad hominem tactics, and (d) an insistence that genuine conservatism is obstructed. Even here, Ellis seems to conflate robust scholarly findings with a heavily narrative-driven approach. Ellis neither fully captures the character of the far-right nor clarifies the contours of what he terms the hard-right, leaving readers without a clearer foundation.
Similarly, Kipfer and Saberi’s publication (Reference Kipfer and Saberi2014), which investigates the emergence of ‘authoritarian populism’ in Toronto, mirrors the shortcomings observed in the works of Karell, Linke, Holland et al. and Ellis by failing to define the term. Kipfer and Saberi exacerbate the conceptual ambiguity by conflating distinct political phenomena – specifically, they amalgamate populism and authoritarianism under the overarching term. Even the authors’ treatment of ‘authoritarian populism’ remains unclear, as they present it as a standalone ideology rather than as a stylistic approach, contrary to Mudde’s characterisation (Mudde Reference Mudde2017).
The incorporation of authoritarian elements leads to reductive conclusions, such as equating far-left extremism with far-right extremism in certain instances. This is a clear application of the pseudoscientific horseshoe theory (Choat Reference Choat2017), which is avoided in political science (Ince Reference Ince2023). Despite mentioning far-right extremism and acknowledging some authoritarian components, which inherently suggest illiberal tendencies, Kipfer and Saberi (Reference Kipfer and Saberi2014) similarly fail to provide a clear definition of the hard-right. Consequently, the term is once again employed to describe undemocratic elements, perpetuating its imprecise usage within their analysis.
Similar problems are evident in publications by scholars such as Blokker and Binder (Reference Blokker and Binder2024) and Berlet (Reference Berlet2004). In their analysis, Blokker and Binder differentiate between hard-right and populist parties – the latter also being presented as a standalone ideology – while presupposing a definition of hard-right as an established concept. In contrast to Kipfer and Saberi (Reference Kipfer and Saberi2014), Blokker and Binder argue that hard-right parties do not espouse anti-democratic or fascist ideologies, yet they also fail to elucidate the origin of the term.
In contrast, Berlet asserts that it should be distinguished from the extreme-right without elaborating on the argument. Notably, he claims that many scholars and activists refer to all right-wing movements outside the electoral system as the far-right or hard-right. This claim has two problematic aspects: First, far-right movements can exist within the electoral system (Vitek Reference Vitek2024) by espousing ultraconservative ideas while adhering to liberal democratic norms (Whitham Reference Whitham2024); second, despite asserting that many scholars and activists use the term ‘hard-right’, he provides no citations to support its usage outside his own publication.
Upon critical review of the scholarly literature, three primary findings emerge. First, as of 2025, academic discourse remains insufficient in providing a comprehensive definition or detailed analysis of hard-right politics. This void represents a significant gap that future research must address, potentially situating hard-right politics within a specific framework on the political spectrum. The existing literature, as demonstrated by the reviewed publications, lacks a clear and precise definition, which undermines the rigorous analysis of far-right movements.
Second, in some cases, the term’s usage appears to follow what was earlier described as a ‘snowball’ effect. Its initial limited application proliferates without substantial justification. For example, Berlet (Reference Berlet2004) argues that numerous scholars adopt the label ‘hard-right’, thereby creating a self-reinforcing cycle of usage. His assertion lacks empirical evidence and also fails to align with established political science terminology, suggesting a methodological flaw in the term’s propagation.
Third, the term has become a buzzword comparable to populism in recent decades (Hunger and Paxton Reference Hunger and Paxton2022). Journalists seem eager to adopt it, but the key difference lies in their academic frameworks and development. Populism is a well-established (thin-centred) ideology (Mudde Reference Mudde2017), whereas the hard-right lacks presence in scholarly literature and is mentioned only in a limited number of publications.
The academic merit of the ‘hard-right’ is nearly nonexistent. Current scholarly works have not provided any theoretical foundations to support its usage, instead treating it as an assumed concept. While the adjective ‘hard’ may offer appeal as a catchy buzzword, its nature and lack of clarity render it inadequate for accurately categorising political parties within the scholarly context. Based on the above analysis, there is no evidence that notable scholarly contributions have advanced the development or refinement of the term. Thus, the term remains inadequately defined and theoretically unsupported.
Theory
Framing Theory, rooted in the seminal work of Goffman (Reference Goffman1974) and further developed by Entman (Reference Entman1993), posits that the way information is presented – the ‘frame’ – significantly influences how audiences interpret and respond to that information. In the context of this study, Framing Theory elucidates how media outlets construct narratives around political parties labelled as ‘hard-right’. By defining problems, diagnosing causes, making moral evaluations, and suggesting treatments, media frames shape the perceived extremity or moderation of these parties. For instance, labelling a party as ‘hard-right’ rather than ‘far-right’ can alter the audience’s perception of its ideological stance, potentially softening the perceived threat and reducing the urgency for critical evaluation of its policies.
This nuanced framing affects public discourse by influencing how extremist ideologies are normalised and legitimised within mainstream narratives (Brown and Mondon Reference Brown and Mondon2021). The selective emphasis on certain attributes over others in media reporting serves to construct a specific image of the ‘hard-right’, thereby guiding public interpretation and response.
Complementing Framing Theory, Agenda-Setting Theory (McCombs and Shaw Reference McCombs and Shaw1972) explores how media prioritise certain issues, thereby shaping what the public perceives as important. While Framing Theory addresses the ‘how’ of media messaging, Agenda-Setting Theory addresses the ‘what’. This process directs attention towards specific political labels and may marginalise more precise, academically grounded terms such as ‘far-right’. This prioritisation not only affects what issues the public considers important but also shapes the framework within which political debates occur, thereby influencing voter perceptions and behaviours. The prominence given to ‘hard-right’ in media coverage focusing on the far-right ensures that this term becomes a focal point in public discourse, subtly guiding audience discourse priorities.
To deepen this integration, Framing Theory becomes the primary interpretive anchor: It delineates the semantic contours of ‘hard-right’ by selecting which attributes – resoluteness, electoral traction, and ideological rigidity – are foregrounded and which are elided. Agenda-Setting Theory then operates upstream, showing how repeated foregrounding of the same label amplifies its perceived importance and shapes the public agenda. In practice, framing imbues ‘hard-right’ with meaning, while agenda-setting determines the label’s reach and resonance. This synergy reveals not only what the media tell us about the ‘hard-right’ but why it is important to view it as a central concern in political discourse.
A concise semantic comparison further explains why ‘hard-right’ has supplanted ‘far-right’ or ‘extreme right’ in many headlines. ‘Far’ denotes distance from the centre, and ‘extreme’ implies moral censure; by contrast, ‘hard’ suggests firmness and determination without overt censure. This allows outlets to signal seriousness and threat while avoiding the sharper condemnations – and possible legal or ethical complications – associated with more stigmatic terms. Within this theoretical lens, this choice of adjective thus functions as a strategic device: It shapes the meaning of the phenomenon (framing) while ensuring the label’s diffusion and repeatability across outlets (agenda-setting).
The combination of Framing Theory and Agenda-Setting Theory provides a solid lens through which to analyse the media’s role in shaping the discourse around ‘hard-right’ political movements. Framing Theory helps decode the qualitative aspects of how ‘hard-right’ is portrayed, revealing the underlying narratives and connotations associated with the term. Meanwhile, Agenda-Setting Theory offers insight into the prioritisation of ‘hard-right’ in media coverage.
Method
This study employs qualitative media content analysis, which enables an in-depth critique of language and framing in context (Brennen Reference Brennen2021). Following established guidelines (Elo and Kyngäs Reference Elo and Kyngäs2008), a purposive sample of media documents that prominently discuss or label groups as ‘hard-right’ – for example, newspaper articles, broadcast news transcripts, and opinion editorials from mainstream outlets – was systematically collected. These texts were analysed through an iterative coding process to identify recurring themes, frames, and narrative patterns. Consistent with Hsieh and Shannon’s (Reference Hsieh and Shannon2005) approach, the analysis involved subjective interpretation of the content of text data through the systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes or patterns. In practice, this meant paying close attention to how the term ‘hard-right’ was used in each article – its connotations, the surrounding descriptors, and the situational context – rather than merely counting its occurrence.
To capture how media construct narratives about ‘hard-right’ movements, the study determined identifying framing devices and narrative elements in the coverage (Scheufele Reference Scheufele1999). This included analysing the portrayal of actors (eg depicting movement leaders as extremists, patriots, or outsiders), the plotlines or causal explanations offered (such as linking the movement to societal crises or, conversely, to grassroots grievances), and the moral tone or evaluations embedded in the text. Each media text was treated as a narrative artefact, with inquiry into what story the outlet was telling about this movement and what the intended audience takeaway was. Through thematic coding (Vaughn and Turner Reference Vaughn and Turner2016), dominant narratives were extracted – for instance, a security narrative framing the ‘hard-right’ as a threat to democratic norms, or an identity narrative situating the movement as a reaction to social change. Language cues such as metaphors or historical analogies that bolster the narrative were also noted.
A key feature of the methodology is its evaluative orientation towards the term ‘hard-right’ itself and the implications of its usage. This study does not engage in a comparative frequency analysis of labels (eg checking how often ‘hard-right’ appears as compared with ‘far-right’ or other terms). Instead, the interest lies in qualitatively critiquing the label – examining what its usage does in narrative terms and questioning its analytical validity. Qualitative content analysis is well suited for this goal, as it goes beyond merely counting words or extracting objective content. Thus, rather than treating ‘hard-right’ as a neutral descriptor to be counted, the study interrogates it as a narrative construct.
The analysis is critical, reflecting on how the coding and interpretation of the term’s usage might reveal biases or contested meanings in public discourse. In doing so, the study builds upon existing content analysis approaches but enhances them by incorporating this critical lens that directly addresses the study’s normative stance on the term ‘hard-right’. For example, while recent computational studies documented a surge in the media’s use of right-wing extremism labels (Rozado and Kaufmann Reference Rozado and Kaufmann2022), the qualitative approach probes the why and how of such labelling.
The media dimension
Having demonstrated that the term lacks a solid academic foundation and that narratives carry significant linguistic consequences, it is evident that its application in journalistic contexts is not underpinned by rigorous scholarly frameworks. The contention is that the term is intrinsically problematic, as it tends to engender misconceptions in the media and conflates distinct political concepts – such as populism, radicalism, and extremism. This paper focuses on the English-language press, with particular emphasis on prominent UK and pan-European media outlets. As mentioned in the ‘Method’ section, the selected publications include The Guardian, BBC, Politico, The New Statesman, The Economist, Reuters, and The Financial Times.
The Guardian
The Guardian is employed as a principal example – a case study thoroughly analysed by Brown and Mondon (Reference Brown and Mondon2021) in their examination of mainstream far-right discourse. Notably, over 200 articles published between 2022 and 2025 used the term ‘hard-right’. Although only 20 articles were ultimately selected, the widespread use of the term among journalists validates The Guardian’s inclusion as a case study in Brown and Mondon’s work. The selection process prioritises the most-read articles, identified via The Guardian’s search engine – which ranks content on readership metrics comparable to those used by Google – and this methodological framework is uniformly applied to the other media outlets in the analysis.
For example, in June 2024 The Guardian published an article titled ‘The EU is braced for a rise in the hard-right. What matters is how the centre responds’, which exclusively employs the term ‘hard-right’ to characterise entire Eurogroups, including the now-defunct Identity and Democracy (ID) and European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) factions (Henley Reference Henley2024a). Additionally, the author collectively labels these parties and their leaders, such as Meloni, as right-wing.
This categorisation raises several concerns. For instance, the ID group formerly comprised parties such as Hungary’s Fidesz (Rogers Reference Rogers2020), an authoritarian party widely acknowledged for undermining democratic institutions, and Germany’s AfD – a party with documented links to neo-Nazism and extremist activities (Klikauer Reference Klikauer2018) that is currently under investigation by Germany’s intelligence agency.
Another pertinent example is the article ‘EU elections: populist right makes gains, but pro-European centre holds’ (Rankin, O’Carroll, and Bayer Reference Rankin, O’Carroll and Bayer2024), which applies the term ‘hard-right’ alongside populism. Although the title remains ostensibly neutral, the text examines several of Europe’s most uncompromising far-right parties, alternately labelling them as ‘hard-right’ and ‘populist right’. This dual labelling dilutes the true character of these parties by conflating populism with ‘hard-right extremism’. Moreover, the article does not engage with the concept of populism, failing to clarify its usage and implications in the context of far-right politics. The absence of a precise definition for the ‘populist right’ is not accidental but indicative of a broader tendency to deploy such labels uncritically and imprecisely.
A similar pattern emerges in the article ‘Starmer puts “pragmatism” before perceptions in meeting with the “hard-right populist” Meloni’ (Crerar Reference Crerar2024), in which Meloni’s policies are presented in a subdued manner. The author prioritises pragmatism over more incisive ideological critique, thereby mitigating the radical aspects of Meloni’s platform. This tendency is echoed in other articles, such as ‘Authors leave Hungarian publisher in protest at sale to Orbán-linked college’, which characterises the authoritarian Fidesz party as ‘populist hard-right’ (Oltermann Reference Oltermann2023).
Finally, another salient example can be seen in the coverage of Robert Jenrick (Walker and Dugan Reference Walker and Dugan2024), one of the Conservative party’s leadership candidates for the 2024 Tory leadership race. Here, the author continues the pattern without discussing his specific policy proposals or overall political stance. Jenrick’s platform included contentious and arguably unconstitutional electoral promises (O’Connell Davidson, Reference O’Connell Davidson2025), such as mass deportations (Stacey Reference Stacey2024), the prospect of withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights, and claims that certain cultures are inherently unequal (Elgot et al. Reference Elgot, Courea, Mohdin and Osuh2025). His alignment with the far-right is clear, yet the author chooses to portray him as a politician who has recently shifted into the ‘populist right’. This duality and the imprecise application of these labels reinforce the earlier contention that a ‘snowball’ effect fosters the widespread use of political buzzwords devoid of academic rigour.
BBC
Misconceptions about far-right groups are equally prevalent in other outlets. The BBC, for instance, discusses the AfD without scrutinising its identity and the significant implications of its policies, despite ample evidence of its far-right extremist nature. In the article ‘AfD embraces mass deportation of migrants as German election nears’ (Parker Reference Parker2025), the BBC states, ‘In 2024, a talisman of the AfD’s hard-right – Björn Höcke – was fined twice for using a banned Nazi SA paramilitary phrase, “Alles für Deutschland” (“everything for Germany”)’. Although former leader Höcke was closely linked to neo-Nazism within the party (Whigham Reference Whigham2021), including ‘der Flügel,’ the BBC continues to employ the term ‘hard-right’.
When addressing neo-Nazi ideology and extremism, the BBC also shows deficiencies. In the article ‘Why is billionaire George Soros a bogeyman for the hard right?’ (BBC News 2019), the title emphasises the term ‘hard-right’, yet the content does not mention terrorism and violence associated with debunked antisemitic conspiracy theories aimed at the Hungarian philanthropist (Langer Reference Langer2021).
Ideological confusion is also evident in another article (Adler Reference Adler2023) titled ‘Polarised Spain eyes the hard-right ahead of election’. The title again employs ‘hard-right’, and the article neglects to provide crucial context regarding Vox’s flirtation with authoritarianism. In addition, the author omits any reference to Vox’s neo-Nazi ties (Santamarina Reference Santamarina2021), which are central to its communication. Crucially, the author does not label the party ‘far-right’ yet describes Pedro Sánchez’s second government as a coalition of socialist and ‘far-left’ parties. These double standards are further demonstrated by the depiction of the now-defunct Unidas Podemos as a far-left faction.
Politico
Politico also fails to integrate appropriate political science terminology. For instance, in the article (Wax Reference Wax2024a) titled ‘The hard right is mainstream in Brussels now’, the term ‘hard-right’ appears in the title but is not consistently applied throughout the text. However, the author correctly designates the European People’s party (EPP) as ‘centre-right’, revealing a possibly unintentional ideological selectiveness.
One of the most problematic pieces is Politico’s interactive map featured in the article (Coi Reference Coi2024) ‘Mapped: Europe’s rapidly rising right’, which attempts to chart the ascent of far-right parties across Europe. The author categorises all the parties as ‘right’ and ‘hard-right’, disregarding their distinct ideological profiles. The map includes parties such as the AfD, Fidesz, Rassemblement National (France) (Stockemer Reference Stockemer2017), Fratelli d’Italia (Pietrucci Reference Pietrucci2023), and Law and Justice (Poland) (Nalepa Reference Nalepa2021) – all of which have demonstrated far-right extremist tendencies. Yet, these parties are uniformly mislabelled with two vague terms, thereby obscuring their unique ideological differences and producing a homogenised, inaccurate portrayal.
Furthermore, another article (Wax Reference Wax2024b) titled ‘Von der Leyen opens the door to Europe’s hard right’ fails to clarify its terminology. The ID group is described as far-right, while no clear explanation is provided for differentiating them from the ECR, which is labelled as hard-right. Despite this distinction, the author undermines their analysis by asserting that ‘Far-right parties have been kept out of power across much of Europe by an unspoken agreement among more moderate rivals’. Overall, these articles culminate in oversimplified and unsubstantiated conclusions that contradict established political science, mirroring the shortcomings identified in The Guardian and BBC.
The New Statesman
The New Statesman appears to have adopted the term wholesale in its coverage of far-right movements, failing to differentiate between individual parties. In the article ‘How Europe’s hard right went mainstream’ (Münchau Reference Münchau2024a), the publication groups Europe’s most far-right parties – including the Rassemblement National, Fidesz, Fratelli d’Italia, and the Party for Freedom (Netherlands) – under a single label. This practice demonstrates an avoidance of engaging with the distinct ideologies of these parties, thereby distorting the analysis by homogenising diverse entities.
This problem recurs in other articles, where the failure to address critical nuances within far-right politics results in blurred ideological distinctions and undue leniency in media portrayals. Notable examples include ‘EU leaders are pushing the hard right to form a united front’ (Münchau Reference Münchau2024b), ‘Geert Wilders is coming for the EU’ (Coates Reference Coates2024), ‘What the National Rally’s rise means for Labour’ (Hayward Reference Hayward2024), and ‘The seismic radicalism of Nigel Farage’ (Cowley Reference Cowley2024).
The Economist
Despite its reputation for rigorous economic analysis, The Economist also appears to sidestep scientific terminology in favour of buzzwords. On several occasions, the publication exhibits the aforementioned shortcomings: It does not categorise parties ideologically, adopts the flawed term without sufficient context, and conflates populism with far-right rhetoric without justification. In some cases, it omits other ideological factors by merely describing parties as populist, thus implying that populism is a self-contained ideology.
A closer examination reveals these practices in detail. For instance, in the article ‘Herbert Kickl, Austria’s hard-right ideologue who played the long game’ (The Economist 2025), the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ) – which emerged in 2024 following its electoral victory – is not depicted as one of Europe’s most extremist examples, despite its founding by former Schutzstaffel (SS) officer Anton Reinthaller (Riedlsperger, Reference Riedlsperger, Bischof and Pelinka2020). Although the author cites Austrian journalist Paul Lendvai, who characterised Austria as a ‘fortress dominated by far-right politicians’, the article avoids this term, instead opting for ‘hard-right’.
Numerous other articles employ the term without providing explanations of the underlying ideologies and dynamics. Notable examples include ‘Hard-right parties are entering government across Europe’ (The Economist 2024a), ‘The hard right takes Germany into dangerous territory’ (The Economist 2024b), and ‘The hard right Vox party is winning over Spain’s youth’ (The Economist 2024c). Each piece addresses only isolated aspects of far-right politics, relying on concepts that invariably fall under the ‘hard-right’ label.
Reuters
The international news agency Reuters has applied the descriptor ‘hard-right’ in its coverage. This usage is evident in the article ‘Hard right could hold more power in EU parliament after election’ (Blenkinsop Reference Blenkinsop2025), which leads to an oversimplification of ideological distinctions. Even though expert commentary in the piece differentiates between populist and radical parties, it continues to treat populism as a separate ideology. Notably, the term ‘hard-right’ is repeated six times throughout the article to collectively describe all far-right parties and groups in the European Parliament. Another example from December 2024, titled ‘Romanian hard right says it wants to be part of new government’ (Ilie Reference Ilie2024), illustrates the interchangeable use of ‘hard-right’ and ‘far-right’ without sufficient clarification. In this instance, the author alternates between these terms when referring to the same far-right entities in Romania.
Finally, a more recent Reuters article (Reuters 2025) published in January 2025 – ahead of the February 2025 German election – titled ‘Vote for CDU-CSU, Italy’s foreign minister tells Italians living in Germany’, once again employs the term to characterise the AfD. Consistent with other media outlets, this example fails to examine the party’s ideology or provide evidence of its extremist or terrorist activities, nor does it note that the party is under surveillance by Germany’s intelligence agency.
The Financial Times
The final segment of this section scrutinises The Financial Times, which, similar to The Economist, predominantly focuses on economic and market analyses. Two articles, published in April (Barber Reference Barber2024) and June (Foy and Dubois Reference Foy and Dubois2024), classify European far-right groups within the Parliament as a single hard-right faction, citing parties such as the Rassemblement National and the AfD, among others. Consistent with earlier media analyses, these articles refrain from providing a detailed ideological discussion.
A similar approach is observed in another article (Dunai Reference Dunai2024) on the Romanian election, published in November 2024. In this notable instance, the author employs ‘hard-right’ and ‘far-right’ labels interchangeably. The piece discusses Călin Georgescu, a ‘pro-Russia’ presidential candidate in Romania, and examines his links to the radical nationalist party Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR). The interchangeable use of these terms adds further confusion, as the author fluctuates between them while also describing the candidate as a radical nationalist.
Common trends and divergences
Across the seven outlets examined, ‘hard-right’ operates as a powerful umbrella that compresses a spectrum of political currents into a single narrative threat, yet the mechanics of that compression differ in telling ways. In The Guardian and The New Statesman, the label appears almost as a reflex, attached indiscriminately to parties as ideologically disparate as Hungary’s Fidesz, France’s Rassemblement National, and Italy’s Fratelli d’Italia. By offering no qualifiers – no nod to divergent policy platforms, coalition histories, or cultural contexts – these outlets treat ‘hard-right’ as self-explanatory shorthand. The effect is twofold: Distinct movements lose their individual contours, and readers come to expect ‘hard-right’ to stand alone as a synonym for extremism, regardless of substantive differences.
In contrast, The Financial Times and Reuters demonstrate a more cautious approach, intermittently appending brief descriptors that gesture towards the specific grievances or organisational styles at play. These qualifiers perform crucial framing work, signalling to informed readers that ‘hard-right’ does not denote a monolith but a cluster of related phenomena. Yet, the nature of these clarifications – and their routine omission from headlines – reveals the tension between analytical depth and editorial economy. Space constraints compel headline writers to dispense with nuance, even as the body text attempts to restore it, resulting in a possible disjuncture that rewards skim-reading audiences but punishes those seeking substance.
Placement of ‘hard-right’ within an article further shapes its interpretive heft. Politico seizes on the term in its text, using it as a narrative hook to signal electoral momentum or ideological inflexibility before pivoting to policy specifics or human-interest angles. This strategy relies on agenda-setting: By leading with ‘hard-right’, Politico primes readers to see subsequent developments through a lens of threat or urgency, even when the text offers scant evidence for such framing. The Economist, meanwhile, embeds ‘hard-right’ within longer analytical pieces on global economic realignments or cultural backlash. Compared with other outlets, The Economist appears to use the term more widely in its headlines, particularly in analyses of the far-right and in pieces examining the economic implications of potential electoral victories.
These common currents intersect with divergent narrative frames that further shape audience takeaways. The Guardian often frames ‘hard-right’ within a security or democratic backsliding narrative, warning of threats to institutions and civil liberties. The New Statesman, by contrast, leans into cultural identity frames, emphasising reactionary social values and cultural anxieties. Reuters and The Financial Times occasionally adopt an economic-risk lens, spotlighting potential market instability or fiscal populism. Through these varying frames, each outlet prescribes how readers should feel – alarmed about democratic decay, fearful of cultural erosion, or uneasy about economic fallout.
Despite these stylistic divergences, deeper patterns emerge across all outlets. The term flattens internal complexities: Far-right populists, nativist nationalists, and reactionary conservatives are folded into one undifferentiated bloc. Repetition in headlines and captions is a powerful agenda-setting tool that reinforces the term’s prominence and normalises its use.
Another axis of variation concerns the provenance of the label. In Reuters and The Financial Times, the term is often introduced through attributed statements – expert commentary or stakeholder forecasts – rather than asserted as fact by the outlet itself. In its May 2025 analysis of the European Parliament, Reuters anchors it in Member of the European Parliament (MEP) projections and analyst interviews, noting that ‘hard right groups [are] forecast to win 30–50 seats’ before naming each participating party. Similarly, The Financial Times prefaces its grouping of parties such as Rassemblement National, AfD, and Fratelli d’Italia with market-focused assessments and seat-count data, attaching ‘hard-right’ to a detailed discussion of voting blocs and economic risk. Practically, these outlets signal that ‘hard-right’ is an analytical shorthand grounded in observable behaviour – but one that still collapses substantive differences when deployed without further unpacking.
A temporal dimension further demonstrates how outlets have refined – or resisted refining – their use of ‘hard-right’. Early coverage in 2022–2023 by The Economist and the BBC tended to apply the label with little contextualisation, treating it as self-evident shorthand. For example, The Economist’s June and September 2024 pieces on government coalitions and German politics lead with unqualified characterisations. By contrast, in December 2024 The Economist’s analysis of Vox’s youth outreach included a note on the party’s origins and ideological roots, and in January 2025 the BBC’s report on AfD’s deportation policy appended legal-status clarifications to its ‘hard-right’ descriptor. Some of these adjustments reveal an editorial learning curve: As critiques of buzzword-driven oversimplification mounted, some newsrooms began intermittently restoring nuance – albeit too sporadically to escape the broader pattern of label inflation.
Discussion and conclusions
Drawing on Brown and Mondon’s study (Reference Brown and Mondon2021) of the use of populism in The Guardian, the term ‘hard-right’ emerges less as an analytical category than as a rhetorical device with two interlocking functions. First, by subsuming a spectrum of parties and movements under a single label, it obscures their distinct ideological commitments, flattening nuanced policy debates into an undifferentiated warning of extremism. Second, this blanket designation generates deliberate confusion about which actors are implicated – an ambiguity that not only heightens public alarm but also diffuses potential legal liability for defamation. In framing terms, media outlets thus construct ‘hard-right’ as a catch-all villain, while through agenda-setting they channel attention to a nebulous threat rather than to specific platforms or personalities. Making these key logics explicit demonstrates how the term ‘hard-right’ functions to drive a fear-laden news narrative at the expense of clarity and accountability. It has been demonstrated that the strategic use of vague terminology ultimately softens extremist platforms’ image and bolsters their electoral appeal.
This critique has highlighted the limited scholarly rigour underpinning the term’s adoption in nonscientific contexts and calls attention to how media organisations often marginalise academic research, allowing the label to devolve into a mere buzzword. A key catalyst behind the term’s proliferation is the orchestrated involvement of far-right groups that recast themselves as ‘centrists’ while accusing mainstream outlets of branding them ‘far-right’. This tactic propels populist discourse and encourages the ongoing reliance on nonscientific language. In turn, there appears to be a deliberate avoidance of precise political science vocabulary within media reportage, in part because such terminology faces pronounced opposition, especially in the European context.
Discussions in academic and journalistic circles also point to a prevalent, uncritical acceptance of the term, with little scrutiny of its historical or conceptual development. The Guardian’s consultation with experts such as Rooduijn, who characterises the term as more confusing than elucidating (Henley Reference Henley2024b), illustrates the pitfalls of casual usage. Although Rooduijn emphasises that political parties may moderate themselves over time, The Guardian has continued to eschew stricter editorial guidelines, leaving the label’s vagueness unresolved. As a result, journalists are missing opportunities to position parties accurately on the political spectrum.
Brown and Mondon’s (Reference Brown and Mondon2021) arguments about normalising far-right ideologies and softening political terminology align with observations of a decline in journalistic standards. Evaluations of various media outlets show that The Guardian is not alone: Multiple sources similarly substitute buzzwords for meaningful ideological explanation. Adding to these findings, Krzyżanowski and Mats Ekström’s framework (Reference Krzyżanowski and Ekström2022) demonstrates how media narratives can become further subdued under pressure from far-right figures, such as Alice Weidel, who reproaches the press for applying the ‘far-right’ label. This dynamic raises critical questions about the nature of such pressure and the impetus behind media accommodation (Kisic and Kinnvall Reference Kisic Merino and Kinnvall2023). Although only a few case studies address the phenomenon, de Jonge and Gaufman’s exploration of the 2021 Dutch general election identifies a tendency in journalistic rhetoric to strike a ‘balance’ in the face of far-right demands (de Jonge and Gaufman Reference de Jonge and Gaufman2022). This approach can result in the normalisation of far-right ideology, leaving audiences unaware of deeper extremist undertones. Attempts to appear unbiased thus risk obscuring vital information regarding illiberal agendas.
The implications of these results extend beyond the immediate context of far-right politics. They suggest that the language chosen by media organisations can actively shape the contours of political debate. When a term is applied without rigorous conceptual underpinning, it inadvertently becomes a catch-all that masks the diverse and often dangerous ideological elements underpinning political extremism. This linguistic transformation has the effect of reducing a complex ideological spectrum into a singular, less critical narrative, thereby compromising the electorate’s ability to discern nuanced differences in political platforms.
In this light, the media’s selective labelling becomes a critical factor in the normalisation and mainstreaming of once-marginal political positions (Katsambekis Reference Katsambekis2023), with profound consequences for democratic accountability and the vibrancy of public debate. Also, it is vital to emphasise the importance of linguistic precision, as a more nuanced vocabulary is essential for preserving the integrity of political discourse and ensuring that citizens are equipped to critically assess the true nature of political agendas.
Beyond its immediate findings, the study invites a broader reappraisal of how discursive practices function within the political arena. It challenges scholars and practitioners alike to consider the far-reaching effects of oversimplified labelling – not only in the realm of far-right politics but across the entire spectrum of political communication. The evidence presented here underscores the need for a renewed focus on the interplay between language, ideology, and power, pointing to the possibility that similar processes may be at work in other areas of political discourse.
Furthermore, the research shows the potential for interdisciplinary dialogue between political science and media studies. By drawing attention to the ways in which media narratives can subtly reconfigure political identities, this study enriches this conceptual toolkit for analysing contemporary political phenomena. It provides a framework for future investigations that seek to explore the enduring impact of language on political perception, and it raises important questions about the responsibilities of media practitioners in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
When it comes to journalistic standards, to mitigate this effect, two practical guidelines are proposed. First, news organisations should avoid nonscientific labels and adopt a standardised glossary drawing on established typologies such as Mudde’s tripartite model of far-right ideology (authoritarianism, nativism, populism). Second, headlines and leads ought to pair labels with brief qualifiers – policy stances, voting records, or coalition histories – so that readers receive essential context without sacrificing readability.
These straightforward recommendations also point towards avenues for interdisciplinary research. Future studies could examine how social media algorithms interact with headline labelling to amplify shorthand terms or employ experimental designs to measure how variations in adjectives (‘hard’ versus ‘far’ versus ‘extreme’) influence audience threat perceptions. Comparative work in non-Anglophone media systems would clarify whether this labelling logic stems from English-language norms or reflects a broader global phenomenon. Such investigations would refine the theoretical synergy of framing and agenda-setting demonstrated here and deepen understanding of media-language power in politics.
Future research ought to examine the psychopolitical impact of labelling by analysing how individuals emotionally respond to particular terms, what semantic connotations they derive, and how substituting traditional political science labels with novel descriptors alters those responses. Against the backdrop of normalisation, empirical studies – drawing on experimental designs, sentiment analysis and focus-group techniques – can reveal how such labelling shapes perceptions of party legitimacy and support and thus illuminate its potential contribution to electoral success.
In summary, the lens applied here shows that the ‘hard-right’ label is not simply a descriptor but part of a broader phenomenon of label inflation, strategic political rebranding, and the euphemistic normalisation of extremist ideologies. By merging perspectives from political communication, media studies, and ethics, this study exposes how such vague terminology undermines accountability – shifting focus away from specific actors and policies – and poses urgent questions for journalistic practice about the balance between immediacy and accuracy. As political actors increasingly exploit labels to sanitise radical positions, newsrooms must adopt stricter editorial standards to guard against inadvertent normalisation, while scholars continue to scrutinise the discursive mechanisms that shape public understanding of far-right extremism. Only by holding political storytellers and scholars to rigorous criteria clarity, responsibility and ethical integrity can be achieved in the collective conversation about the far-right.
Funding statement
No funding received.
Competing interests
No competing interest was reported by the author.
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