In Mexico, a complex undercurrent of racism, xenophobia, and far-right extremism continues to shape modern day society and politics. From the rigid racial hierarchies of Spanish colonial rule to the modern-day appearance of neo-Nazi and anti-LGBTQ+ groups, Mexico has a long history of far-right activism. This report is a deep dive into this often-overlooked aspect of Mexican society, tracing the historical roots of discrimination from the caste system of New Spain through the turbulent years of revolution and reform, and into the present day.

It examines how, despite progress in many areas, deeply ingrained prejudices persist, manifesting in ongoing marginalization and violence to migrants, Indigenous, and Afro-Mexican populations, a rise in anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment, and the emergence of new far-right movements with troubling international connections particularly to American and European far-right actors.

Brazil has a long history of far-right politics and movements that have been fueled by horrific racism towards its Black and Indigenous populations. It enslaved millions of Africans during its centuries of Portuguese colonization, exploiting them to build a wealthy plantation class. Out of the 12 million Africans who were kidnapped and taken to the Americas, approximately half were forcibly relocated to Brazil between 1540 and the 1860s. Shamefully, Brazil was also the last nation in the Western world to officially abolish slavery in 1888, long after gaining independence from Portugal in 1822.

Many American Southerners moved to Brazil after the Civil War. Called confederados (confederates), they wanted to continue their slave-holding way of life, with some communities to this day celebrating the past with confederate battle flags and other emblems associated with America’s pre-Civil War southern states. The inhumane treatment and forced labor of enslaved Africans is fundamental to Brazil’s history, and much like the U.S., its ongoing struggle with systemic racism.

Antisemitism and other forms of hatred have a centuries-long history in German-speaking parts of Europe. Pogroms against Jews reach far back, at least to the fourth century and the time of the first Christian Roman Emperor Constantine. Jews have repeatedly been targeted and killed during times of upheaval. During the Middle Ages, Jews were accused of poisoning wells and spreading the Black Death, which led to mass slaughter of German Jews in the 1300s. The history of Jews in Germanic lands is one of repeated pogroms.

Centuries later, the Nazis built on this simmering antisemitism to construct their genocidal regime, which led to the deaths of millions of Jews. The Nazi regime also targeted the Roma, the LGBTQ+ community, communists, and others for death. The concept of Aryan purity under assault from outsiders drove these murderous impulses and led to the decimation of the Jewish community in Germany. As this report concentrates on contemporary far-right German extremism, the long history of hatred for those considered non-Aryan will not be recounted here. In the post-WWII period, while Germany was occupied by the Allies in the West, denazification of the country was a key priority.

It is impossible not to use the word fascism when writing about the far-right landscape in Italy, both because of Italy’s history with fascism and because the term is frequently used in describing the political landscape today. While most experts agree that the foundations of fascism are authoritarian and nationalistic, there is debate about other basic characteristics, including the role of bigotry and the oppression of marginalized communities in its furtherance.

The modern Merriam-Webster definition is a “political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race (emphasis GPAHE) above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.”

The contemporary far right in Portugal can be traced back to the traditionalist reaction to the liberal revolution of 1910, which overthrew the Portuguese monarchy and replaced it with the First Portuguese Republic. Unlike many fascist regimes in the early 1900s, Portuguese reactionaries were primarily backward-looking, still admiring the monarchist era before the rise of liberal and enlightenment beliefs.

The defense of these traditionalist Portuguese values, and a rural lifestyle, was later picked up by the 20th-century dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, who expressed traditional fascist rhetoric, but in practice put in place a traditionalist, anti-modernist regime.

Bulgaria’s political history prior to the establishment of the communist regime after WWII is one of occupation and halting steps towards representative government. In the 1800s and earlier, there was the centuries-long Ottoman occupation, which ended in 1878, and gave way in the late 1800s to various German aristocrats being “elected” by somewhat representative parliaments as princes or Tsars of the Principality of Bulgaria.

As such, speaking of far-right movements in today’s terms for that period doesn’t really track given the central role of a Tsar. But the issue of Bulgarian nationalism has always been salient as the country’s independence has long been threatened due to the proximity of the Ottoman Empire and then later by Soviet dominance.

France has a very long history of far-right movements stretching back to the late 1800s motivated predominantly by antisemitism, ethnic nationalism, and religious—meaning Catholic–nationalism. Rooted in France’s history of generally conservative Catholicism, these movements portrayed Jews as a threat to Catholicism, an idea formerly enshrined in Catholic doctrine that is now officially rejected.

Other movements also historically viewed as enemies of the Church, specifically Freemasons, Protestants, and those in support of Republican forms of government, were targeted by the far right. In more recent years, immigrants, and particularly Muslims, have become anathema to the far right’s vision for the French people, which has become more overtly white supremacist and driven by propaganda rooted in the racist Great Replacement conspiracy theory.

Since the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015 and the expansion of access to abortion in recent years, the far-right scene has found foothold and is growing, with a new reactionary political party, the Irish Freedom Party established in 2018 as well as a handful of smaller groups that target immigrants and the LGBTQI community.

Many of these groups have adopted the white supremacist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which argues that white populations are being intentionally displaced from their homelands, a plot often blamed on Jews or globalists.

Australia’s history of far-right and white supremacist activism, often rooted in its colonial experience, has resulted in racist policies and laws regarding the dispossession of Indigenous people, white supremacy, and xenophobic politics. This history parallels in many ways that of the American experience.

Beginning in 1901, the year its six colonies were joined together to create the Commonwealth of Australia, a self-governing and domestically sovereign entity in the British Empire, Australia passed legislation to restrict non-white immigration into the country that lasted until the legal regimes was dismantled between 1949 and 1973 (these policies were akin to the United States of America’s Immigration Act of 1924 that restricted immigration to “Nordics” until 1965).