Far-right and extremist-right ideas of solidarity

Solidarity is one of the concepts that are somewhat diffuse but intuitively understood. They are also quite universal in their rhetoric and political usefulness. Traditionally perceived as more of a left-wing concepts, it has been empirically proved to be also a relevant part of the language of the mainstream right (conservative, Christian democratic) parties (e.g. Stjernø 2004, Kozłowska 2024). What do the parties on the right fringe of the politics do with the concept? Do they incorporate the more mainstream ideas of solidarity (e.g. solidarity as a national community, solidary community as the notion for the taxpayers, solidarity limited by subsidiarity, solidarity as a counterpart to competition) or do they develop their own ideas? How central is the idea of exclusive solidarity (Lefkofridi & Michel 2014) to the overall concept of solidarity developed by the far-right and extreme-right parties? Do they even have a developed idea of the concept? Are there systematic differences between parties and can they be explained by certain characteristics (e.g. their age, ideological profile, levels of populism (as it would suggest more shallow ideologies in general), their country, their competition/party system)? This study investigates party platforms and electoral manifestos of far-right and extreme-right parties in several European countries (Austria, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Hungary) from 1989 on. The programmatic documents are searched for the use of the term “solidarity” in any grammatical form, and then analysed along an interpretative matrix. If solidarity is used as an interaction, the passage is coded along the: who, with whom, where, when, and why? If it is used more as an abstract feature, the main focus is on the definition (if there is any to be extracted) and on the function this feature plays, or should play, according to the given party, in the society, the state, or their sub-element mentioned in a given passage. The uses and meanings of solidarity are then typologized, and – if possible – the tested parties as well. The last step is a comparison with other established ideas of solidarity – left-wing, social-democratic, Christian democratic and liberal ones (Kozłowska 2024).