This paper investigates the so-called 'far-right mainstreaming' thesis in environmental politics, implying that the far-right discourse has permeated mainstream right-wing politics and that the line between far-right and centre-right ideology has become increasingly blurred due to the influence of far-right talking points. To this end, we identify ideological similarities and differences in environmental arguments across the right-wing spectrum by analysing the voting records and parliamentary speeches of three major right-wing party groups in the European Parliament: the European People's Party (EPP), the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), and various far-right party groups, across EP terms since 2009. The findings reveal some mainstreaming of the far right in the ECR positioning since the mid-2010s and especially in the post-pandemic era. However, the shared environmental positions of the different right-wing groups, such as pro-people protectionism, subsidiarity, and balancing competitiveness with environmental policies are overshadowed by more significant ideational and contextual differences.

This study focuses on right-wing populists (RWP) in power and their discourses and policy preferences on environmental issues. Through a content and frame analysis of electoral manifestos, party communication and semi-structured, in-depth interviews with party representatives, this paper examines whether ideological or contextual factors (political opportunities) determine RWP positioning on the environment. By focusing on the only three cases in Europe of RWP in government in a prominent position, i.e. alone or as a major coalition partner (also representing key ideological varieties of RWP), Law and Justice - PiS in Poland; Fidesz in Hungary and Lega in Italy, this study shows that ideological positions (and especially differences) are less important in determining RWP environmental discourses than are opportunities and institutionalization. Moreover, we also find that the shared features across these actors reflect a conditional, 'yes-but' environmentalism of these parties, embedded in the discourse of ecological modernization and oppositional, Manichean framing.

The mainstreaming of the far-right worldwide has immense societal effects, one of the main being the normalization of 'far-right talking points', quotidian expressions of far-right worldviews existing well beyond the political proponents of this ideology. Our piece tries to explore the effects of far-right talking points in the environmental domain. We do so by utilizing the theoretical concept of microfascism, the everyday expressions and practices of societal exclusion and the desire for authoritarianism. More specifically, we test the extent to which far-right ecologism, the ideological response of the far right to an array of environmental problems, operates as a set of arguments existing beyond the representatives of this ideology. To do so, we conducted a mixed-methods study, consisting of a quantitative survey of 106 respondents, followed up by 27 semi-structured interviews conducted with environmental activists in Serbia, a dynamic and nascent settings for environmental activism. Our findings illustrate the methodological issue of capturing ideological positioning through diverse methods but more fundamentally, the broader implications of far-right talking points in the environmental domain.

As research on far-right climate change communication focuses on climate skepticisms, little is known about how the far-right justifies climate acceptance-and what this might mean for environmental education and counter-communication. To initiate a discussion of communicative strategies through which far-right actors might become more accepting of climate mitigation, we, first, reconstruct the narrative structure underlying far-right climate acceptance. Drawing on insights this reconstruction provides and assuming that such acceptance contains lessons for persuasive communication with far-right skeptics, we, second, discuss a number of axioms for counter-communication to be used in environmental education and teaching practice.