Portugal has just become the latest European country in which the far right has made political inroads, with the Chega party coming in third in March’s parliamentary elections.
But it is not unique in this regard. In some European countries, the far right has achieved considerable political gains, while in others, it has posed a notable threat to other political parties contesting elections without shifting the status quo.
At this current juncture, it would be misleading to characterise Europe as being at risk of being overtaken by the far right.
The rise of the far right in a number of European countries is worthy of attention because it is the product of two separate dynamics that are playing out in countries like Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and the UK.
'Migrant crisis'
The first dynamic is immigration. In 2015, with Islamic State (IS) terrorist activities as well as the Syrian conflict dominating the headlines all over Europe, right-wing groups stoked fear in the European public domain that migrants were invading the continent.
The so-called “migrant crisis” contributed to the vote in the United Kingdom in 2016 to exit the European Union and paved the way for far-right political parties in France and elsewhere to use fear of migration to rally popular support.
Almost a decade later, migration continues to be instrumentalised by both the right and the far right as a political tool.
In the United Kingdom, a legal to-and-fro has been going on between the government, the courts, the House of Commons and the House of Lords regarding whether the government can implement a plan to deport illegal migrants to Rwanda, where they would be held in detention centres until their cases have been reviewed.
Read more: Blaming immigrants: Western populists reach for their playbook
Successive Home Secretaries in the UK from the ruling Conservative Party have adopted the Rwanda plan to symbolise their commitment to curbing illegal migration.
As the United Kingdom anticipates a general election in the second half of this year, migration is one of the main issues attracting right-leaning voters. In this regard, some of the rhetoric used by the right is similar to that used by the far right.