The global shift of far-right movements and parties to the epicenter of power is undeniable. Instead of hovering at the peripheries and fringes of socio-political discourse, populist far-right parties have ascended to power, seizing the reins of leadership and reshaping democracies and governments from within. The global far-right’s rise to power is not just political—it fills a deeper void in modern life, offering seductive fantasies of identity, order, and belonging amid the dislocation and uncertainty of the present.
In Europe, this comes as a warning of civilizational decline as far-right groups preach the gospel of ethno-cultural preservation while demonizing immigrants. In India, the Hindu nationalist movement has transformed a secular republic into an ethnic democracy, marching towards its vision of a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu nation). Online and across borders, the manosphere floods young men with a steady drip of grievance-loaded masculinity infused with fantasies of domination. In 2024, 21% of young men expressed support for far-right parties compared to just 14% of women in the same age group, with this gap amongst Europeans widening rapidly after 2020. It is thus essential to meditate on the philosophical and psychological appeal of far-right narratives and their emotional resonance within the deeper structural and symbolic conditions of the present.
Analyses on misogyny and the manosphere often focus on understanding the socio-political implications of this phenomenon—and rightly so. It is important, however, that we envision the global far-right as not merely a resurgent political force, but also a collective change project that deceptively offers a belonging, clarity and moral purpose to those feeling marooned and disorientated by modernity and its hyper-connectivity.
Glocalization and the Existential Crisis of Modern Life
At the heart of this contemporary crisis lies the deep structural contradiction inherent in contemporary lived experience; the tension between globalization and glocalization. Globalization has accelerated the flow of capital and technology, democratized the production and distribution of information and created deeply networked societies. However, in doing so, it has also eroded traditional social anchors, unmoored cultural norms and facilitated a deepened sense of isolation and desire for rootedness and identification in an increasingly crowded and deafening public sphere.
As a concept, glocalization refers to the process in which global forces are reinterpreted, refashioned and absorbed within local cultural frameworks. We should understand it as the reactive reassertion of local identities in response to the effects of globalization. It is thus not a rejection of globalization, but rather its domestication and the process through which transnational currents of change are made emotionally resonant and socially legible. This is achieved by renegotiating those broad changes through the lens of local history, culture and experience.
Within the prism of the far-right, this helps explain the global circulation and resonance of narratives that warn of civilizational threats and preach the need for ethno-cultural homogenization and purification. These master frames are refracted through specific nationally and culturally resonant grievances and mythologies. The result is localized and distinct yet interconnected movements. This process of glocalization has allowed far-right movements to craft collective change projects that feel both urgently local and globally relevant, offering ideological resistance and belonging to a growing section of humanity that feels increasingly dislocated and isolated.
This dynamic is exemplified by the hegemonic project constructed and consolidated by the Hindu nationalist movement in India, which represents a century-long project of glocalization by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its constellation of affiliates. Fundamentally a reactionary cultural backlash from upper caste Hindus, the movement has always been concerned with preserving the dominance and privilege of upper-caste Hindus while selectively and effectively absorbing perceived ‘strengths’ from invading or hegemonic cultures to reforge a more militant and resilient Hindu identity.
From colonial era emulation of masculine militarism to the evangelical practices of Christian missionaries, and now to the contemporary valorization of technology and development, the Hindu far-right has continuously adopted its strategies. It has embraced digital technology and economic modernization in the service of cultural majoritarianism. The goal is to create a hegemonic order in which Hindu nationalism flows through an expansive digital ecosystem of disinformation, hate-spin, and analog violence.
The Abyss and the Collapse of Meaning
It is in this symbolic chasm—between global fluidity and the forceful assertion of glocalization—that the abyss of identity and meaning takes shape, offering crucial insight into both the nature of our contemporary crisis and the enduring appeal of the far-right.
In his 1886 treatise, Beyond Good and Evil, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche evoked the concept of the abyss to symbolize an existential void and the terrifying confrontation with meaninglessness in a time of rapid change. The perceived collapse of traditional cultural, religious and moral frameworks is a process he famously referred to as “the death of god.” The abyss can thus be perceived as a space of radical uncertainty, where old identities are rapidly dissipating and new ones are yet to fully emerge. Prophetically, Nietzsche noted:
“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”
Interestingly, Nietzsche himself did not mourn the collapse of moral and cultural frameworks, seeing it instead as a precondition for transformation and evolution, a chance to overcome nihilism and the inherent “slave mentality” imposed by these traditional frameworks.
The human psyche, though, as Nietzsche understood it, is not engineered to stare into the void— allow it to stare into you—as the means to create new meaning. We recoil from the abyss and fear the absence of rootedness and guarantees. We instead refashion fear and insecurity into a reactive moral anger rooted in envy, grievance and a resistance to change that he referred to as ressentiment.
I would contend that it is from this surge of ressentiment at the edge of the abyss that the global far-right derives its power. Rather than the courage to create, it offers the comfort of condemnation through the fantasy of restoration of a mythologized past and revenge of an identifiable enemy to blame. The appeal of the far-right and its strength lies not only in being a political actor, but in its ability to offer a fantasy structure that denies the void by promising to fill it with meaning.
We can clearly observe the seductive appeal of ressentiment in the rise of far-right parties across Europe, where the abyss of identity and meaning has been deftly repurposed into a narrative of cultural siege and civilizational decline. Parties such as France’s National Rally, Hungary’s Fidesz, and Italy’s Brothers of Italy have constructed political identities rooted in the restoration of a mythologized past that is morally ordered around an ethnically homogenous—and culturally Christian—vision.
To achieve this, they have skillfully translated the disorientation wrought by globalization into emotionally charged campaigns that assert national identity through the politics of exclusion. Within this prism, economic precarity, cultural pluralism and transnational governance are highlighted as political concerns superimposed upon minority communities, immigrants and the European Union’s bureaucrat in Brussels, who all serve as symbolic stand-ins for the chaos and contingency of modern life.
In essence, the far-right in Europe does not reject globalization, instead interpreting it intelligibly through ressentiment and the theft of identity and sovereignty. The ‘solutions’ offered by the far-right, ranging from anti-immigration reform to conservative, anti-pluralist social policies, are fortress fantasies that we should understand as glocalizing strategies that aim to identify the individual through a sacred national identity. It does not seek to solve the existential crisis of modern individual existence that plagues the individual, and offers in place of meaninglessness the catharsis of blame and the illusion of moral clarity.
Psychoanalytic Appeal of the Far-Right
Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek provides us with a psychoanalytic framework that deepens our understanding of the abyss and the emotional resonance of far-right narratives. Drawing from the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Žižek contends that an individual’s identity is drawn from—and sustained by—a symbolic order, the “big Other,” which encompasses language, law, tradition and ideology. In times of rapid change and perceived crisis, individuals are increasingly confronted with collapse of this symbolic structure, a traumatic encounter where one’s coordinates of meaning, purpose and identity disintegrate, which Žižek termed subjective destitution.
This is the psychological experience of Nietzsche’s abyss, a moment of profound loss and ideological indigence—but one of radical potential. Like Nietzsche, Žižek identifies this void at the heart of the self, where meaning dissolves and certainty collapses as a potential site of freedom and transformation, also while noting that few possess the capacity to confront and endure radical uncertainty.
Instead, there is solace in embracing radicalization and seeking refuge in ideological fantasies that offer to reassemble coherence from chaos. It is here that we can understand the psychological appeal of the far-right. These movements effectively translate the psychological trauma of displacement and subjective destitution into emotionally legible scripts that offer the shelter and seductive fiction of restoration in place of having to confront the reality of reinvention.
An effective illustration of this psycho-symbolic dynamic can be found in the proliferation of the manosphere, an expanding and vast transnational digital ecosystem of forums, influencers, and ideologues that construct highly resonant narratives of masculine grievance, decline, and restoration. This ‘crisis of masculinity’ is not merely material but deeply symbolic, steeped in the erosion of cultural and social markers and scripts of value and purpose that celebrate traditional notions of masculine strength. The mental health crisis among men is particularly acute, with studies showing boys experiencing higher rates of ‘depressive symptoms, suicidal thoughts, and a sense of isolation,’ while 65% of American men report feeling that ‘no one really knows me.’ Manosphere influencers ascertain that depression simply doesn’t exist. Through this sense of subjective destitution, the manosphere offers a narrative of gendered injustice and emasculation, as well as a seductive fantasy of re-establishing a hyper-masculinized moral order which negotiates anxieties and vulnerabilities over a range of issues.
The manosphere promises everything from economic security to sexual desirability, achieved through an assertion of male aggression and the subjugation of women to traditional gender roles. The emergent movement, more than a digital subculture, is a glocalized psychological refuge that renders the void at the heart of the self emotionally legible and symbolically coherent through a reactionary mythology of patriarchal restoration.
Confronting the Abyss
The rising dominance of the global far-right should be understood not as the rise of a political force, but as the growing hegemony of a meaning-making collective change project that offers emotionally resonant responses to the symbolic, perceived disintegration of contemporary life. In a globalized era marked by hyperconnectivity, cultural fragmentation and the collapse of traditional social pillars, it translates the trauma of dislocation and subjective destitution experienced by the individual confronting the abyss by constructing seductive fantasies of restoration that promise belonging, coherence, and moral certainty through scripts of revenge and revival.
The far-right does not seek to confront or resolve the abyss. It instead seeks to deny it by offering refuge through ressentiment by allocating blame to designated “enemies” and filling the void with the illusion of control. To meaningfully challenge this emotional and psychological appeal, it is not enough to engage through politics and policy. Instead, we must engage in the battlefield of ideas by confronting the abyss and seeing in it the potential for evolution and growth. This involves constructing alternative symbolic frameworks that acknowledge uncertainty without succumbing to fear—offering solidarity, dignity, and meaning as shared projects of becoming in a rapidly changing world.
To do so, we must reinvest in rebuilding the public sphere from the ground up, through grassroots networks, local forums, and civic infrastructures that foster dialogue and a renewed sense of shared living. This involves actively cultivating spaces where the perceived crises of masculinity, identity, and cultural dislocation are not mocked or immediately dismissed as being bigoted or rooted in misogyny, but are instead engaged with critically and with empathy.
Rather than pathologizing these grievances, we must build counter-narratives that affirm plurality and mutual respect, offering alternative scripts of meaning that can channel pain and confusion into constructive belonging. These initiatives might include neighborhood assemblies as well as cooperative and creative spaces that encourage art, storytelling and performances that engage with these discussions or even discussion groups that explore vulnerability and masculinity outside the frames of dominance and grievance. These efforts must be accessible, participatory, and rooted in everyday life and should become a key part of civic and social education curriculums in schools. The goal is not just to counter and neutralize extremism when it rears its head, but to also foster a socially resilient culture that is anti-fragile, able to absorb shocks, hold difficult conversations, and evolve by growing stronger in the face of crisis.
In confronting the abyss, we will find that it does stare back but does not reveal monsters. Instead, it reflects the shape of our response. If we meet its gaze without fear or fantasy, we may find not annihilation, but the first quiet form of who we can become.