Introduction: Mapping the ‘right of the mainstream right’ in contemporary Europe

Why should we still bother with the extreme, radical, neo-fascist, neo-Nazi or populist right? Why yet another manuscript when most already seems to have been said? Since the fi rst signifi cant breakthrough of the phenomenon on French soil in the 1980s, acres of print have been dedicated to analysing, scrutinizing, labelling, and at times, warning against this (ultra-)rightist galaxy, from a national or comparative, and recently also from a transnational or anthropological perspective. Yet, right-wing extremism remains a hot topic for the media and public opinion, and a key subject across the social sciences, as it continues to appear, reappear or progress in virtually every European democracy and in the remotest corners of the continent.