This text is part of the contents of the first book by ECOAR))) and will go on sale at the end of this year, 2026. Winning the Narrative! Manual for Combating the Far-Right Discourse.
The far-right is more than a political ideology. Behind its discourses, symbols, and rituals, there exists a deep psychological structure that connects individual vulnerabilities with collective dynamics. Understanding this profile is not a theoretical exercise but a central element in being able to counter its discourse.
Weaving a coherent and multidimensional portrait of far-right people will be done here by drawing once again on the literature that served to define fascist psychology, since the psycho-emotional basis is the same: it is based on an organised fragility, a personality that projects outward its inability to endure complexity and uncertainty.
The far-right person, then, is not strong: they are fragile. Their apparent toughness, aggressiveness, and/or self-assurance are merely a defence against deep vulnerabilities. Their need for order, purity, and authority merely reflects an enormous inability to endure and manage complexity, uncertainty, and difference. Thus, the person with this stance is not born with a far-right worldview; they are simply a person who feels threatened. They feel insecure and fragile at the level of identity, so they perceive themselves as susceptible to being eroded or modified by external forces. That perception of vulnerability—sometimes real, sometimes imagined—triggers the search for processes or people capable of “protecting” collective identity and “ordering” society itself.
Thus, the essential psychological characteristics of far-right people can be defined around 5 dimensions:
Cognitive Dimension
Far-right thinking, like religious or magical thinking, is characterised by an extreme simplification of reality. It operates through binary and exclusive categories: good/evil, pure/impure, friend/enemy… This view eliminates nuances and complexities, offering a controllable, clear, and predictable world. Any situation that escapes its scheme is experienced as threatening and distressing, since this profile is characterised by low tolerance for ambiguity.
Following this same line of seeking to avoid uncertainty, another key piece appears: anti-intellectualism. Experts, scientists, and academics are distrusted because critical knowledge, facts, and complex explanations distance the person from the simplistic narrative construction. The other side of the same coin is conspiracy theories, as they offer simple explanations for complex problems, attributing “evils” or “problems” to small groups (sometimes hidden, sometimes not) that attack, assault, or conspire against the “people”. In this way, the person makes the world understandable and controllable, even if it is through a “fiction”.
Emotional Dimension
The fundamental emotion that moves the far-right person is anxiety in the face of complexity. Cultural diversity, social changes, elaborate theoretical explanations, or future uncertainty generate deep insecurity and discomfort. This anguish finds relief in nostalgia, in “closed” narratives that look “backwards”, that idealise a mythical past in which order and group identity were supposedly unquestionable.
The far-right person experiences an intense fear of everything that is different. “Otherness” (immigrant, dissident, LGTBIQ+…) is perceived as a direct threat to identity and to the very survival of the group. This perception of threat justifies aggressiveness and exclusion against all those people or collectives that do not follow the “proper path”, which is usually justified with adjectives such as “normal” and “natural”.
The need for certainty is almost “pathological”, since the opposite implies an increase in fear and insecurity, and if there is one thing that characterises this profile, it is a low capacity for managing and tolerating frustration. Doubt, ambivalence, and emotional complexity are unbearable. It could be said that far-right ideology functions as a kind of “anxiolytic”, since it offers absolute and closed answers, while at the same time providing a coherent narrative that counteracts and eliminates the anguish of uncertainty.
Relational Dimension
As in the other dimensions, the need for security and the elimination of uncertainty causes the far-right person to be a gregarious person with a relationship of unconditional submission to authority. The leader is idealised as infallible, and also guards the truth in an absolute manner and embodies the nation itself. That is why the far-right person not only respects the leader but idolises them, and is willing to defend any of their actions without questioning.
Empathy is highly selective, since only the emotions—and the very humanity—of people who are part of the in-group are recognised. Other people are seen through stereotypes and prejudices and are dehumanised or turned into beasts, which eliminates moral ambivalence and allows the use of violence without any remorse or limit.
The binary conception of reality means that the far-right person depends on the construction of an enemy in order to exist. In their perception, without a “them” that threatens, “us” loses its raison d’être. The enemy fulfils essential functions: it gives meaning to collective identity, justifies aggression as self-defence, and, above all, externalises responsibility and avoids self-criticism and introspective thought. Blaming the other is easier than facing one’s own shortcomings and processes of deep analysis.
Behavioural Dimension
For the far-right person, violence is glorified as a legitimate and necessary expression. In addition to being a cultural and political instrument of social control, violence is also a safety valve through which to channel accumulated anger, frustration, and resentment. Aggression confers an identity (“I am strong because I can destroy”), reinforcing the feeling of belonging to the group, while at the same time defending it (“I have to be violent with those who try to attack us”). This behavioural pattern merely reflects the difficulties they have in emotional regulation and the tendency to externalise discomfort towards groups considered enemies.
Intrinsically related to violence is the obsession with purity, which manifests itself through policies of racial, cultural, and moral exclusion. The fear of “contamination” of society by foreign elements (physical, cultural, moral…) justifies control, repression, and even elimination. In this context, it is the leader who promises to restore order by eliminating these perceived threats, offering a sense of control and security that compensates for internal vulnerability.
Structural Dimension
As Bataille expounded on fascism, the far-right articulates an alliance between heterogeneous and homogeneous forces. Homogeneous society is the productive one, based on utility, rationality, and money, which resolves everything through norms and agreements. On the other hand are the heterogeneous forces, which are those that modern society represses (violence, irrationality, drives, and defence of the sacred).
This alliance between heterogeneous and homogeneous forces that configures the far-right serves the State to build an unconditional authority situated above utility and reason. The rejection of rationality and utility as supreme values is replaced by the exaltation of force, will, and sovereignty. It is a form of power that uses the irrational force of the mass (which every society represses), places it at the service of the State (which configures a homogeneous order) through an absolute authority (which needs no justification), and ends up destroying everything (because it has no internal brakes).