Viktor Orban, PM of Hungary. Wikimedia. Public domain.Intransigent and often inscrutable, the far right – in its populist, radical, and extreme variants – clearly represents one of the most significant offshoots of post-war European politics. This phenomenon had already sparked the interest of observers with the first electoral exploits of the French Front National in the 1980s and 1990s. As a whole plethora of variously assorted organisations enjoyed noteworthy results ever since, the attention devoted to them has risen exponentially.
Still, a serious cognitive divide persists between events unfolding in eastern rather than western Europe. Part of the reasons reside in the fact that social, cultural, and political developments in central and eastern Europe (as in the entire post-communist region) traditionally fell under the umbrella of ‘area studies’ – de facto reproducing those epistemological divisions that have long hampered dialogue between social scientific disciplines and, thus, knowledge as a whole.
At the same time, central and eastern Europe regrettably remained at the margins of enquiry until a good portion of these countries completed their ‘return to Europe’ – as some like to interpret it – with the eastern enlargements of 2004, 2007, and 2013.
