In the US and Europe, the far right is often portrayed as the defender of the working class, the representative of “forgotten” people or the post-industrial “left-behinds”. The working classes, so the argument goes, have flocked to the far right because “the left” has betrayed them. Moreover, far-right parties, it is claimed, have moved to the left on socioeconomic issues such as employment rights, replacing social democratic parties as the “new working-class parties”.
Despite the popularity of this narrative, including among social democratic elites in Europe, workers have not flocked to far-right parties, but rather to the mainstream right and the Greens. And now, our new study shows that while far-right parties might talk leftwing, they still back rightwing anti-worker policies.
