Hungary’s Mi Hazánk Mozgalom (Our Homeland Movement, MHM) party tells a classic tale of far-right politics. Formed after an internal dispute in the extreme-right Jobbik party, which had been in existence since 2003 and had begun to tone down its rhetoric, the MHM leadership’s plan was to occupy the supposedly vacant space on the far right of Hungarian politics. Despite being the third most successful list in the 2019 parliamentary elections, after Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz and the united opposition, led by Péter Márki-Zay, the party won only 2 out of 199 seats. MHM’s leader, László Toroczkai, is a respected figure on the Hungarian and international far-right scene, being one of the founders of the historically revisionist Sixty-Four Counties Youth Movement, …

The far right is gaining power in many liberal democracies. Far-right actors threaten democracy by spreading their nativist, exclusionary and authoritarian ideas through various means (Mudde 2019). They are protesting on the streets, mobilising support on social media, getting elected to parliaments and participating in governments. In Europe, far-right parties have increased their share of the vote in recent years and are currently in government in Italy, Hungary, Finland and Switzerland (Rooduijn et al. 2023). But how can we explain the entrenchment of the far right? I argue that to fully understand the entrenchment of the far right in democracies, we need to look beyond electoral politics and consider the mainstreaming of the far right in public debates, which I …