This article theorises epistemic asymmetry as a structural condition shaping contemporary research on the far right. While scholars benefit from unprecedented access to public discourse, digital traces, and electoral data, internal deliberative processes, organisational dynamics, and relational infrastructures remain partially opaque. The resulting imbalance risks conflating performative representation with ideological formation and strategic coordination. Drawing on interpretive sociology, political ethnography, and methodological debates, the article introduces methodological proportionality as a regulative principle: explanatory claims must remain commensurate with evidentiary proximity and empirical substantiation. Through critical engagement with macro-structural, computational, archival, and digital approaches, the study highlights the projection problem – where structural plausibility substitutes for actor-centred reconstruction. It argues that immersive, longitudinal, and multi-scalar fieldwork, combined with triangulation across sources, is indispensable for capturing internal differentiation and transnational dynamics. Ultimately, epistemic discipline – rather than data abundance – constitutes the foundation of rigorous far-right scholarship and contemporary political research more broadly.
Nicola Guerra (Thu,) studied this question.