Arguably similar to previous years, 2022, in which this chapter was written, will be remembered as a year marked by wars, pandemic, climate change and, as a consequence, constant fears for the lives of our loved ones. Some of these crises have also revealed a striking distrust of science, followed by continuous doubt mongering in relation to some of the established scientific findings. The pandemic has, together with climate change, amplified this contestation of science and the rejection of scientific authority in the name of personal freedoms. Although they might have originated elsewhere on the ideological spectrum (including the more ‘moderate’ right), these protests are commonly associated with the far right. This is not surprising given the link between this ideological spectrum and anti-intellectualism informing their conspiracism (Bergmann, 2018), arising from the antagonism towards the political order of liberal democracy (Pirro & Taggart, 2023; Uscinski et al., 2021).

Indeed, the anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine and other protests against measures taken in the cause of public health amid the pandemic have been spurred around the world, reiterating the connection between the far right and anti-intellectualism (Bieber, 2022). In Eastern Europe, where far-right parties have assumed power in several countries (e.g. in the Visegrad Four region), managing the pandemic was particularly challenging, with Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia all being in the top 10 of the world's COVID-19 death per capita list. This in part had to do with the politicization of expertise and the contestation of legitimacy, which led to disarrayed and virtually unenforceable policies (Buštíková & Baboš, 2020). Unsurprisingly, this caused a notable backlash and open resistance towards the measures proposed by the governing bodies. The reasons for this backlash were numerous: from sheer denialism of the threat, the existence of the virus or the effectiveness of the vaccine, to more nuanced (and more founded) ones related to personal data management and the implementation of specific measures. Either way, the far right, ¹ and in particular its (more) extreme portion, has either bandwagoned or openly contributed to the anti-lockdown and, subsequently, anti-vaccine or COVID-pass protests. Accusations of dystopian realities and ‘Orwellian regimes’ generated in the name of the ‘mild flu’ have been commonly voiced by, among others, the far right and other sceptics, even though research has shown that the far right's response to the pandemic is far from monolithic (van Dongen & Leidig, 2021). On the one hand, the majority of far-right organizations around the world exploited the pandemic-related restrictions (such as lockdowns) to assert their indexical orders and Manichean, binary outlooks on the world in order to broaden their appeal. On the other hand, there are (rare) cases of the far right acknowledging the scientific positions and governmental policies related to the pandemic, or at least being ambivalent about the existing regulations (van Dongen & Leidig, 2021).

As explained above, the spectrum of responses to a crisis, from openly contesting the (emerging) science to endorsing and embracing the measures in order to mitigate harmful consequences, including everything in between, has already been noticed with the far-right responses to anthropogenic climate change. Until the last couple of years, there has almost been a scientific consensus concerning the far right's role in spreading climate scepticism or even straightforward denialism (Rahmstorf, 2004). Notwithstanding the rare cases of climate acceptance, the far right has long been perceived as a hindrance to the vote for progressive climate policies (Lockwood, 2018) and this has been mirrored by the individual attitudes of the voters and supporters of the far right (Huber et al., 2021; Krange et al., 2021) and even conservative parties (McCright & Dunlap, 2011). Even in those cases where the far, and especially the extreme, right offers an elaborate ecological agenda, building on the profound ideological link with origins in the nineteenth century (see, among others, Staudenmaier & Biehl, 1995; Olsen, 1999), this ‘green nationalism’ is, more often than not, considered a concomitant of climate scepticism (Malm & the Zetkin Collective, 2021). Only recently has the scholarship attempted to answer what the argumentation of radical- and extreme-right climate acceptance looks like (see Lubarda & Forchtner, 2023). However, such a task with respect to the morphology of COVID-related scepticism coming from the extreme right has not yet been performed.

With this missing part of the puzzle, and taking into account the relationship of the far right to anti-intellectualism that informs these policy positions, this chapter aims to reconstruct the ideological rendition of science by the far right, in relation to climate change and the pandemic. Of course, these two challenges do not exist in a vacuum. In other words, reasons for acceptance, scepticism or denialism are conditioned by the political context, ideological trajectories and strategic positioning. However, attitudes towards the pandemic and climate change are mutually informing due to their immense contemporary salience and the common ideological grounds from which positioning on these issues is derived. To respond to the central aim of canvassing the spectrum of COVID-19 scepticism and its relationship with the similar claims associated with climate change, as well as understanding what this (in)congruence may mean for the extreme right's relationship with science, this chapter will commit to the following tasks. First, it will explore the role of anti-intellectualism in the ideological space of the extreme right. Secondly, it will present the data and method operationalized in this chapter, providing also a background of three extreme-right organizations from the V4 region used in this study: Czech Republic's Národní demokracie (National Democracy), Mi Hazánk Mozgalom (Hungarian Our Homeland Movement), and Slovak Kotlebovci – Ľudová strana naše Slovensko (Kotlebists – People's Party: Our Slovakia) and its breakaway party, Republika (Republic). Thirdly, building on the analysis of the social media posts and 12 qualitative interviews conducted with the representatives of these parties, the chapter will outline the spectrum of sceptical arguments related to COVID-19 and its overlaps with the scepticism related to anthropogenic climate change. Fourthly, and finally, the chapter will use these results to revisit the far right's attitude towards science, intellectualism and authority in light of the contemporary crises.

Anti-intellectualism and authority of the far right

It may seem surprising that the terms ‘anti-intellectualism’, referring to the mistrust of intellectuals and scientists, is a concept virtually confined to the analysis of US politics (Hofstadter, 1963). In the US, anti-intellectualism was ‘the heart of McCarthyism’ in the 1950s, leading to a populist crusade on the wings of religious fundamentalism and fervid anti-communist sentiment (Peters, 2019). The core features of this American anti-intellectualism are its individualistic bent, venerating ‘self-made men’, strong religious background and utilitarian logic (Hofstadter, 1963). Rigney (1991) added ‘populist anti-elitism’ and ‘anti-rationalism’ to this conceptualization, all to indicate the right-wing garb of this conceptualization (for the left and centrist variants of anti-intellectualism, see Featherstone et al., 2004). Even though its mainstreaming was particularly evident in the era of Donald Trump, anti-intellectualism and its consequence, conspiratorial framing, has been a permanent shadow of right-wing populism and, consequently, the far right (Gauchat, 2012), which is what makes it relevant for international politics beyond the US context.

What made anti-intellectualism particularly suitable for its conjunction with fascism and the extreme right is the logic of scapegoating, commensurate with the Manichean distinction between the absolute moral categories of good and evil, core values of fascist, far right and populist ideological morphologies (see Kallis, 2003; Mudde, 2007), paired with a sense of victimhood and ‘ambivalence towards representative politics’ (Pirro & Taggart, 2023: 7). In fact, anti-intellectualism and the downplaying of art, philosophy, literature, and overall education and scientific expertise were pronounced in the works of Giovanni Gentile, the main theorist of Italian fascism. Gentile was not straightforwardly opposed to science and education, but claimed that the role of anti-intellectualism is to bring together ‘thought and action’ and re-establish concern for the ‘practical world’ (Gentile, 1928: 300). Hence, fascist suspicion of science is based on science devoid of interest to the ‘laypeople’, fuelling the agenda of both the populist radical and the extreme right. This may also lead to a spill-over effect, where the negative popular attitude towards some experts or expertise brings about broader and more general distrust towards matters where scientific consensus has already been established. The alternative reading is the ‘mitigation thesis’, which indicates the possibility of reducing anti-intellectualism through ‘verbal intelligence’ (for an overview, see Motta, 2018).

Irrespective of the scholarly focus on the US, anti-intellectualism is a common feature of the contemporary extreme right worldwide. Juxtaposing it with ‘traditional wisdoms’, science and education in this reading are framed as obstacles and constraints imposed by the epistemic elite that acts as a ‘gatekeeper’ on the individual's pathway to the truth (see Tebaldi, 2021). In Europe, and in particular its eastern part, such conclusions may be less popular on the grounds of their contextual detachment (e.g. the relatively weak tradition of libertarianism). In the internet and ‘meme’ era, these political and ideological traditions bear much less relevance, as messages traverse these geographical boundaries and challenge the established standards or ‘truths’ in a polity (Reyes, 2020). There is already ample evidence on the links between anti-intellectual sentiments and climate scepticism or denialism (Merkeley, 2020) and vaccination (Stecula et al., 2020). At the same time, research has indicated the importance of offering a closer look at the important outliers and caveats, such as the one that anti-intellectuals do not tend to avoid exposure to expertise or COVID-related news (Merkley and Loewen, 2021: 711).

The conspiracism and anti-intellectualism of today are heavily reliant on the conceptualization of authority. In the ideological morphology of the extreme right, including psychological research, authority figures are an indispensable component, possibly even superseding ethno-nationalism. However, authority as a concept and a feature of politics is not only associated with right-wing ideologies (see Manson, 2020 on how left-wing authoritarianism impacts the responses to the pandemic). Authority in its ecological reading has long been considered one of the central features of ‘right-wing ecology’ as well (Olsen, 1999), although its position has been deemed peripheral to the ideology over the last couple of years (see Lubarda, 2019). In other words, far-right ecologists of today, including the most extreme eco-fascists, are placing authoritarian leadership in developing an ecological polity.

The extreme-right reading of authority departs from several basic premises. First, authority is legitimized by a fundamental conviction that human beings are unequal, from which the call for a social and political hierarchy is derived. Secondly, authority is a resolutely anti-liberal concept, which is why, for example, authoritarian, far-right populism has been perceived as an antidote to liberal democracy (Müller, 2016: 31). Thirdly, authority in the extreme-right ideology rests on the conceptualization of order: be it through the authority of experience or through harking back to a nostalgic polity and family (see Lubarda, 2019), authority requires a ‘punitive state’. These principles, however, do not imply that the extreme right's rendition of authority is homogenic, but it is, more often than not, central to their ideological appeal and policy positions. Studies linking far- (thus, not only extreme-) right authoritarianism and the pandemic or other infectious diseases have indicated that viewing the pandemic as an existential threat moderates authoritarian predispositions (Hartman et al., 2021). While the rejection of anthropogenic climate change may seem to go hand in hand with the scepticism related to the origins of, and the measurements taken to mitigate, the pandemic, it is not entirely clear what the idiosyncrasies, for example the acceptance of anthropogenic climate change paired with the anti-lockdown stance, may imply for the notion of authority in the extreme right.

Data and method

As noted in the introduction, this chapter focuses on the attitudes of four extreme-right parties towards anthropogenic climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. The parties were selected on two main grounds. First, their extreme-right ideological position differs from that of the radical-right parties in their explicit rejection of liberal democracy – examples include Freedom and Direct Democracy in Czech Republic, Fidesz and Jobbik in Hungary, and the Slovak National Party. Secondly, the parties included in the analysis share broader regional, political and ultimately far-right contexts, belonging to the Visegrad 4 region, representing post-socialist and Eastern European countries. Finally, the case parties were also selected on the grounds of their exceptional engagement with environmental issues and politics in comparison to other extreme-right organizations in the region.

Národní demokracie (full name ‘No to Brussels – National Democracy’) was founded in 2005, even though its official webpage claims that the party is ‘continuing a 170-year long tradition of preserving and developing the nation’ (Národní demokracie, 2017). The two pillars of the party ideology are ‘defence’ and ‘revival’, signalling the palingenetic component (Griffin, 1991) epitomized in departure from the EU and NATO and the prevention of immigration (Národní demokracie, 2017). Moreover, the party defines itself as a ‘conservative’ and ‘patriotic’ party with an aim to ‘cultivate a healthy mental state of the nation, love of country, knowledge of one's own identity and history’ (Národní demokracie, 2017). It is interesting that even in the declaration of ideological principles, Národní demokracie outlines the importance of environmental protection through the conservative responsibility towards future generations and protecting the resources of the national wealth (see Scruton, 2012). The party had little success in the elections, peaking at only 0.79 per cent at the 2019 European Parliamentary elections and winning no seats in the national Parliament. The leader of the party is Adam Bartoš.

Unlike Národní demokracie, as of 2022 Mi Hazánk has two seats in Parliament. Founded in 2018, the party attempted to occupy the ideological space of Hungarian extreme-right nationalism vacated by Jobbik, the then-leading opposition party. Based on the principles of ‘camaraderie, patriotism, credibility, and anti-compromise’, the party advocates for the ‘salvation of the Homeland’ and of all Hungarians who live in the Carpathian basin (which overlaps with the borders of the Greater Hungary that existed before the Treaty of Trianon, signed in 1921). The leader of the party is László Toroczkai, a well-established figure in the Hungarian far right, being one of the founders of the extreme-right HVIM and one of the highly prominent leaders of Jobbik for more than a decade. The party also has its ecological cabinet, Zöld Hazánk (Green Homeland), led by Krisztina Csereklye.

Kotlebovci – Ľudová strana naše Slovensko was founded in 2010 as one of the many offshoots of the extreme-right Slovenská pospolitosť (Slovak Togetherness). Both organizations were founded by Marián Kotleba, arguably the most emblematic figure on the Slovak far right and a candidate for the 2019 Slovak presidential elections in which he finished fourth (out of 15 candidates). In the 2020 national elections, the party won a total of 17 seats, 3 seats better than in the previous elections in 2016, when the party won about 8 per cent of the popular vote. Kotlebovci has always been an unambiguous extreme-right party, with pronounced ties with historical revisionism and anti-Semitism and its militia unit (Mareš, 2018). In October 2020, Kotleba was sentenced to 4 years and 4 months in prison, after being found guilty of ‘supporting organizations oppressing fundamental human rights’ (Spectator, 2020). His sentencing led to turmoil within the party, when a group led by Milan Uhrík, Member of the European Parliament, decided to form a faction called ‘The Republic’, building on the existing and then-inactive centre-right political party formed in 2002. However, the party has, for the most part, preserved the ideological positioning of Kotlebovci, although somewhat assuaging its position by emulating the principles of the American national conservatives. For instance, the party is less stern on its positioning on the European Union (calling for ‘a fundamental reform’ instead of immediate departure), simultaneously calling for the protection of ‘human rights’ and ‘conservative values’ (Republika, 2021).

The data used in the analysis comprises the official party documents containing policy or ideological positions (electoral and ideological manifestos) and Facebook posts related to the environment and/or (not necessarily COVID-19) vaccination, as well as 12 qualitative interviews (2 with representatives of Národní demokracie, 5 with Mi Hazánk and 5 with Kotlebovci/Republika). The interviews were conducted as part of a larger (doctoral) project on far-right ecologism in Eastern Europe, mostly conducted before the beginning of the pandemic. Because of that, I specifically focused on the answers of my respondents to two questions posed during the interview: ‘What is your opinion on anthropogenic climate change?’ and ‘How do you envisage the role of scientists in your ideal, ecologically prosperous polity?’ Since I did not have the chance to ask the questions about the pandemic (even though I managed to follow up with two of my respondents from Kotlebovci and Mi Hazánk in January 2022), I focused on social media posts on the official webpages about the pandemic and science.

The analytical framework used in the coding of the data was van Rensburg's (2015: 7) typology of evidence, process and response scepticism. Whereas evidence scepticism constitutes the ‘core’ scepticism or straightforward denialism of climate science, with respect to the trend, causes or impact (see also Rahmstorf, 2004), process and response scepticism represents ‘concomitant’ scepticism or scepticism-related claims. ² Process scepticism refers to scientific knowledge generation or decision-making processes, while response scepticism is related to particular policies (van Rensburg distinguishes between policy instruments and policy styles). While this threefold typology was useful in pinpointing climate change scepticisms (van Rensburg, 2015: 7), it was not particularly helpful in drawing boundaries between COVID-19 sceptic claims. For this reason, the primary focus was in identifying as many individual claims as possible. The following section presents the overview of the most commonly voiced claims associated with both climate and COVID-19 scepticisms, before turning to the conclusions related to the position of anti-intellectualism and scientific authority within extreme-right ideology.

Reconstructing the positioning: locating climate and COVID-19 scepticisms on the spectrum

Evidence scepticism about climate change has long been entrenched in far-right climate denialism. A lot has changed over the last decade: the increased evidence on the anthropogenic causes of climate change, but also the emphasis on energy security following the war in Ukraine – these push and pull factors, however, still seem to be going in the direction of response scepticism or even acceptance (see Lubarda, 2023). Although these categories are not watertight and frequent shifts in claims, from evidence to response scepticism and vice versa is possible, Národní demokracie is the only case party in this analysis that has combined all three of the subcategories (trend, cause, impact) within the ‘evidence’ label. In an interview we conducted a few months before the beginning of the pandemic, Jan Sedláček, the leader of the youth section (Národní mládež) and the main spokesperson of the party on climate- and pandemic-related matters, combined evidence scepticism with derogatory claims about climate science being alarmist:

Even though he also emphasized the negative effects of climate change, such as the increased temperatures of the urban zones (for which he suggests allocating resources to plant more trees instead of mitigating the issue globally), Sedláček's remarks fit perfectly the ‘significant positive impacts’ claim within van Rensburg's typology. Perhaps contrary to ideological expectations, Sedláček and Národní demokracie (or any other extreme-right organization in this analysis) did not espouse any of the suggested forms of ‘carbon vitalism’, in which carbon is perceived as constitutive of the natural order (Pasek, 2021). However, authoring a book, Climate Ideology vs. Nature Conservation, Sedláček has been vocal about the ‘alarmism’ of climate science, arguing that climate science is ultimately detrimental to the natural environment. Evidence scepticism of climate change was occasionally voiced also by some of my respondents from Kotlebovci, who linked this scepticism with a (rather flamboyant) criticism of Greta Thunberg.

That dissatisfaction with the figure of Greta Thunberg and her climate activism may lead to an entrenching of denialism was clear in the cases of my other respondents from the same party. To this day, Kotlebovci or Republika have not publicly expressed their lack of trust in climate science, although they have advocated for keeping the Slovak coal mines open, on the grounds of the economic arguments and workers’ rights. The ‘inconclusive’ ‘yes-but’ claims acknowledging the harmful effect of human beings on the environment but not fully accepting climate science is the most commonly announced form of climate change scepticism among the Kotlebists and Republika members:

The archetypal populist fears of the corrupted elites who use climate change to deceive the people (van Rensburg's ‘Climate decision-making process’) provides an example of how the logic of scepticism flows in a way that binds together evidence denialism and a more subtle (and warranted) scepticism towards the policy responses greasing a neoliberal capitalist machine. In other words, evidence scepticism conditions both process and response variants, accentuating the importance of ‘spectral’ understanding of this phenomenon, where the positions may easily shift from one imagined analytical container to another.

In the three cases, process and response scepticism were particularly visible in the extensive critique of the Green New Deal, being linked to ‘climate mafia’ (Národní mládež, Facebook, 10 January 2022). One of the recently raised claims is linked to the looming ‘energy collapse’ amid increasing prices and the demand for electricity during COVID crisis and the war in Ukraine, which cannot be met solely from renewable resources. This argumentative constellation allows both the Národní demokracie and Kotlebovci/Republika to re-establish themselves as defenders of ‘the little guy’ (Forchtner, 2019) and his/her interests against the discursively constructed ‘climate elites’. The actual response scepticism referring to the policy instruments or the policy style is present mostly concerning the economic arguments, that is, the costs of an energy transition (see Capstick & Pidgeon, 2014). This can be explained on three major grounds. First, the relatively weak position of the extreme-right parties in the political systems of the three countries (with the partial exception of Hungary). Secondly, the lack of party expertise in the specific domains of energy and environmental politics evidenced also in the interviews I conducted with the representatives of the three parties. Thirdly, the disinterested electorate (Jylhä et al., 2020). Although all four parties included in this analysis offered a form of far-right ecologism in their official party documents, the ideological content was situated around the idea of a ‘rational’ or ‘conditional’ ecologism (see Caiani & Lubarda, 2023), or ecologism that does not stand in the way of capitalist development.

What is particularly interesting about these forms of climate scepticism is that they are disturbingly similar to the claims related to the existence and responses to COVID-19. After two years and almost 100,000 lives lost due to COVID-19 in Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary, scepticism related to the virus is still in full bloom. However, given the length of the pandemic and its outcome thus far, it may seem as if evidence scepticism, that is, scepticism related to the very existence of the virus and its harmful effects, is intellectually obsolete. Indeed, the claims commonly voiced in the first month of the pandemic, such as ‘COVID-19 being nothing but a flu’ or the more eschatological ones, such as the disease being ‘God's punishment for immoral behavior’ have virtually evaporated even from the extreme-right discourse. Yet, this is not to claim that these were absent. Even though most of these arguments are converging around ‘personal freedoms’, these scepticisms are ultimately about contesting the scientific evidence. Claiming that ‘everyone should have the right to choose’, Dóra Dúró, member of the Hungarian Parliament and former spokesperson of Mi Hazánk, called for an ‘open discussion about the real consequences of the vaccinations’ (Dóra Dúró, Facebook, 24 January 2022). The official Facebook page of Mi Hazánk also cites Andrew G. Bostom's claim that ‘COVID-19 vaccination is three times as dangerous as the virus itself’ (Mi Hazánk, Facebook, 2022). The most recent, omicron variant also served the case of Mi Hazánk to reiterate the mild nature of the disease, making the restrictions and ‘stigma’ fundamentally unnecessary (Mi Hazánk, Facebook, 7 January 2022). Likewise, Milan Uhrík, MEP from Republika (formerly ‘Kotlebovci’) exquisitely argued that ‘the virus is no longer here’, alluding to the inappropriate response of the government to the pandemic and ‘the measures that lack basic logic’:

Thus, it becomes immediately clear that Uhrík and Republika's populist intervention belongs to concomitant, process and response claims of scepticism, rather than the core objects of scepticism (evidence). The spectrum of claims related to response scepticism to COVID-19 is conspicuously similar to the original, van Rensburg's typology of climate change scepticism. Process scepticism mostly refers to the manipulation of scientific evidence, such as when Uhrík argued in the European Parliament that COVID is ‘a mere scam from the pharmaceutical corporations’ (Uhrík, Facebook, 12 November 2021). Found at the intersection of the negative attitudes towards the scientific process and the industry that is abusing the science to call for ever-more restrictions or mandatory vaccinations, process scepticism queries both the logic of scientific discovery and the process through which these findings are communicated to the decision-making entities: political coordination bodies assembled amid the pandemic. This unfolds the extreme-right anti-intellectualism by linking these bodies and the scientists who are, among others, composing them, to leftist or elitist politics. Be it through the ‘communist mentality of the West’, or the ‘covid hysteria’ (Uhrík, Facebook, 12 March 2021), these bodies are held responsible for the measures that are leading to wealth redistribution and a lucrative pharmaceutical industry, responsible for imposing vaccinations. Indeed, the response to the pandemic, that is, the thrust behind the vaccinations, is the main object of COVID-related scepticism coming from the extreme right: while Národní demokracie and Kotlebists immediately rejected the very existence of the virus, Mi Hazánk became involved in the COVID-sceptic movement only after the first wave of lockdowns, March – May/June 2020, and particularly after the first vaccines were tested.

Vaccinations were thus perceived as a ‘money-making scheme’ for the profit of well-established discursive villains, such as Bill Gates (according to Toroczkai from Mi Hazánk, see 24.hu, 2021). Similar to climate scepticism and in line with the ‘rational’ ‘cost–benefit’ logic, the bulwark of response scepticism claims is situated around the economic domain: the costs of the pandemic-related restrictions and the infringements upon the businesses and incomes of ordinary people. What is also interesting is that these calls for ever more ‘openness’ in the name of the people were also funded by denialist networks, such as the Koch family. Within such a logic, COVID-19 (climate)-related regulations are nothing but another invention of the detached elites obstructing the lives of those who are struggling to make ends meet (Forchtner & Özvatan, 2019). As an example, Národní demokracie protested against the government decision to ban the Christmas markets, accusing the government of being influenced by the elites and big businesses against ‘Czech self-employed sellers’ (Facebook, 12 July 2021). While this is present across the four cases and possibly beyond, the reference to incompetent elites noted in, for example, research on climate and COVID-19 scepticism in Germany, is virtually missing from the Eastern European realms (Forchtner & Özvatan, 2022).

With these restrictions in mind, Mi Hazánk in Hungary also advocated for the ‘epidemic solidarity tax’ which would entail a ‘taxation of casinos, pharmaceutical companies, vitamin manufacturers, and retail chains’, all with an intention to support ‘the working Hungarians’ (Telex, 15 March 2021). Similar claims from the spectrum of ‘response’ scepticisms include statements such as ‘no problem – no response needed’ (Lubarda and Forchtner, 2023), implying that the COVID-19 virus is not fundamentally different from other types of viruses. However, this may also point to the deficiency of van Rensburg's typology, as this comment refers more to the evidence scepticism querying the very existence of the virus and the extent to which it is a problem, but also the importance of spectral understanding of such typologies, where the individual arguments may easily permeate the established containers of analytical frameworks.

Another commonly voiced claim belonging to response scepticism and shared by all four parties in the analysis is the one on COVID-19 being an instrument of the totalitarian ‘New World Order’. The principal idea of this ‘New World Order’, in accordance with the well-established conspiracy fable, is in defining ‘first’- and ‘second’-class citizens based on the mandatory vaccinations (see Kalil et al., 2021 for similar discussion in the Brazilian case). Milan Mazurek, a member of the Slovak Parliament from Republika (formerly Kotlebovci), made frequent parallels between the COVID-19 regulations and Nazi-era laws. He warned that Slovakia is becoming a ‘concentration camp’ under the ‘fascist Slovak government’ and imposing ‘reserved lanes for the vaccinated and paid mandatory tests for the unvaccinated is the same as banning Jews from walking on sidewalks in German-occupied zones during the war, or paying a special tax to unbelievers in states conquered by Islamic troops’ (Milan Mazurek website, 10 July 2021). Similar references were also made by other politicians from Republika, as well as Národní demokracie:

Overall, the congruence between climate and COVID-19 scepticist claims is striking. With notable differences related to evidence scepticism (see Table 12.1), conditioned by the different nature of the problems at hand but also the speed with which the pandemic has swept the world, individual claims associated with process and response scepticism show extensive overlap. In the case of COVID-19, most of these two scepticisms are derived from anti-vax and, ultimately, anti-science sentiments. While I encountered interesting outlooks on authority, politics and education, nothing in my interviews conducted with the representatives of Kotlebovci and Mi Hazánk in 2018 and 2019 indicated a belonging to the anti-vax movement. This change in positioning may well be attributed to political opportunism, as the extreme right in Eastern Europe capitalized on the emerging discontent with the way the COVID-19 pandemic was managed. Through frame bridging, or ‘linkage of two or more ideologically congruent but structurally unconnected frames regarding a particular issue or problem’ (Snow et al., 1986: 467), the opposition to vaccine mandates on the grounds of, first, the unknown long-term effects of the vaccines, and, secondly, economic freedoms has gradually turned into the (at the moment, still implicit) opposition to mandatory vaccination in general. This became most visible in the opposition to the vaccination of children, for example when the post on Mi Hazánk's Facebook page reiterated the old populist blueprint, indicating that ‘child poverty increased by 20% during the epidemic, and giant companies increased their income and profit to a level never seen before’ (Mi Hazánk Facebook, 26 December 2021).

In lieu of a conclusion: levelling the grounds between authority and anti-intellectualism

The similarity of claims voiced by COVID-19 and climate sceptics may seem unsurprising – however, what happens when those on the far right who accept the basic tenets of climate science are also among the COVID sceptics? Unlike the obvious case of Národní demokracie, which has extensively engaged with all three types of scepticism, and Republika/Kotlebovci, whose members were less clear about the scientific evidence related to the anthropogenic background of climate change but objected to the policy responses, Mi Hazánk is one of the prominent cases of the extreme right in Eastern Europe which has acknowledged the findings of climate science.

Csereklye, who is also chairing Zöld Hazánk, the party's green cabinet, is not the only party official who has acknowledged the existence of anthropogenic climate change. In his interview, Toroczkai also confirmed that he believes in anthropogenic climate change because its consequences have been made clear (Lubarda, 2023). Toroczkai went on to accentuate the importance of engaging with other nationalists on this issue, in an effort to combat climate change which is now evidently affecting ‘the people on the ground – the farmers’ (Lubarda, 2020). What Mi Hazánk self-admittedly offers to climate change mitigation are ‘locally flavoured’ responses, dependent on contextual circumstances and realms (János Árgyelán, 30 October 2018). Irrespective of the particular claims associated with response scepticism, Mi Hazánk, much like the other far-right organizations in Hungary (Jobbik, HVIM), acknowledges the existence of anthropogenic climate change. Such a position on climate change (and the broader stances on the environment) has mostly been justified on the grounds of the scientific authority that would, in an ideal world, contain the (overly) emotionally loaded environmentalism of the left.

The clear epistemic hierarchy with science and scientists at the helm of decision-making processes, calling for an ‘expertocracy’ may seem to fit the authoritarian principle in the extreme-right ideology. Yet, when the scientific findings conflict with that same ideology or strategic positioning, the trust in scientific authority seems to lose priority to the populist principle of protecting ‘the people’ and their freedoms. The extreme right is well aware of this contention and its potentially damaging impact on its ideological core. Even when this contention is resolved through scepticism, all four parties included in this analysis justify their stances through their ‘own’ science and scientists. In the case of Národní demokracie, these ‘proper’ scientists are to be found in their ranks, often equating scientific reasoning with common sense deduction (see Oreskes & Conway, 2011). For Republika, earlier the Kotlebists, and to some extent Mi Hazánk, the scientists are ‘borrowed’, articulating climate and COVID-19 scepticism at guest lectures and panel discussions organized by the parties. Mi Hazánk even set up the Coronavirus Research Centre, a shadow of the equivalent governmental body, gathering ‘professionals’ with an aim to focus on ‘the facts, tips, and useful advice’ related to the pandemic (Mi Hazánk, Facebook, 11 April 2021).

Thus, in spite of the harmful effects of misinformation related to both COVID-19 and climate change, the extreme right, or at least its representatives in Eastern Europe, is not necessarily downplaying the role of science in its ideal polity. In the case of climate change denialism, it is the integrity of the scientific method that is fundamentally contested, as scientists are presented as insincere or distrustful (Philo & Happer, 2013: 14). But science is never about the imagined purity of ‘facts’, as uncertainties are a constitutive part of science. However, this is not to argue that everything is unresolved (Conway & Oreskes, 2010: 34). With COVID-19, the problem is not so much with the scientists but with the communication of these uncertainties, that is, response scepticism, and the effect governments and corporations have on science communication. Still, these are only speculations: similar to Hoffman's (2012) finding, the public debate about climate change, and, I add, COVID-19, is not about science as much as it is about values and ideology.