Far-Right Movements, Authoritarianism and Pandemic

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has allowed radical right-wing movements to find a new and unexpected terrain of action, fueling discontent against the lockdown measures, implemented in various national contexts to counter the spread of the virus, supporting and disseminating conspiracy theories and manifestations harshly critical of vaccination campaigns. Self-proclaimed defenders of an unprecedented anti-democratic (and at times authoritarian) conception of freedom against "health dictatorships" and policies of controlling and containing the virus (testing, contact tracing, social distancing, mandatory masks adoption), far-right movements, almost everywhere on a global level, have favored the dissemination of narratives based on unbridled individualism, on mistrust of science and scientific knowledge, on protests and street actions even violent, on a denial conspiracy against the COVID-19 epidemic. Starting from these considerations, the panel aims to reflect on the role played by the far-right in these pandemic years, collecting theoretical and empirical papers that mainly address the following issues:

• Transnational comparison on far-right movements dealing with lockdown measures, “health freedom” and social and political critique against global and national “elites”;
• Convergence between far-right and anti-vax, anti-science movements;
• Far-right movements, new mobilization strategies and scenarios, misinformation narratives and use of social media;
• The insurgence of a “health populism” driven by far-right movements around the world;
• The paradoxical relation between far-right authoritarian orientation and the conception of “freedom of choice” emerged in anti-vax and conspiracy communities;