TED Talks Daily
What’s behind the rise of far right politics in Europe | Daphne Halikiopoulou
02 Sep 2025
Far-right parties are gaining popularity worldwide. Why is that? Political researcher Daphne Halikiopoulou reveals how rising leaders tap into people’s economic insecurities and distrust of institutions in order to cleverly rebrand their right-wing policies.For a chance to give your own TED Talk, fill out the Idea Search Application: ted.com/ideasearch.Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDSports: ted.com/sportsTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hume. Why do seemingly ordinary people come to believe extreme things and engage in extreme acts? In her talk, political researcher Daphne Halikiopoulou explores the curious rise of populism and far-right politics across Europe and the globe.
sharing why extreme parties like neo-Nazi political parties become attractive to voters and what might really be behind this shift in beliefs.
So the far-right is on the rise everywhere in Europe. Now, this is different from a while ago. Just until recently, I used to use Spain or Portugal as examples of countries that didn't have the far-right as a significant force. And the problem is not just that these parties are getting a lot of votes. The problem is that many of these parties are now in government. Look at Italy, for example.
Look at Hungary. Look at countries in Scandinavia. Or when they're not in government, they are actual contenders for it. I don't want to think about the next French presidential election or many other countries where these parties are significantly contending for power. Now, why is that?
And why do other parties, more importantly, think that in order to defeat the far right, they need to copy the far right, they need to become the far right? Well, that is because we hear a story, wherever we look at why this is happening, the story we hear is that, well, you know, it's all about immigration. It's all about culture.
It's all about people now not wanting globalization, not wanting immigrants, not wanting transnationalism, people just wanting nationalist politics. And all the parties are doing is that they are responding to this kind of popular demand, as we call it in academia, and therefore the far-right is on the rise.
And what I want to do is debunk this myth and sort of disagree with this and say this is not a simple story at all and it's not a story only about immigration and it's not a story only about culture.
Actually, what it is, is on what we call in academia the demand side or the people or the insecurities that drive people to vote for particular parties are multiple and extend way beyond culture, they extend way beyond immigration. But on the supply, or in other words, the parties themselves,
they are adopting very clever nationalist narratives that are really able to capture this very, very broad coalition of voters. I'm an academic, as I said, and so I love to talk with data and with evidence. And this is just a very, very simple graph that shows what the voters of far-right parties across different European countries look like or what their preferences are.
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