From Margins to Mainstream: Afd and Fdi in Comparative Perspective

The rise of the radical right in Europe has accelerated due to significant events such as September 11, the 2008 global financial crisis, and the 2015 refugee crisis, bringing security and identity-focused policies to the forefront. Anti-immigrant rhetoric has become a common axis that increases these parties’ capacity for action; in some countries, this rise has been fueled by cultural threat perceptions triggered by crises, while in others it has been fueled by the influence of historical and institutional legacies. This article seeks to make a comparative analysis of the rise of the radical right in Germany and Italy, focusing on the central role of anti-immigration discourse. By using Cas Mudde’s four-wave framework, which helps to explain this transformation through both historical continuity and crisis-driven transformations, this analysis demonstrates that both the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and Fratelli d’Italia (FdI) have been strongly influenced by anti-immigration rhetoric. While the AfD’s rise in Germany can be understood as a crisis-driven cultural backlash, the FdI’s rise in Italy can be understood more in terms of institutional and cultural continuity.