Across Europe, the far right is rising. That it seems normal is all the more terrifying | Owen Jones

Austria, France, Germany, Sweden and now Spain - the firewall between the mainstream and the far right is crumbling

Normalisation is the process by which something unusual or extreme becomes part of the everyday. What once provoked horror and outrage soon barely registers. The way the presence of Donald Trump became a mere fact of political life is perhaps the most familiar example. But the normalisation of the far right is happening across the democratic world.

Once Trump became normal", events that seemed even more extreme did too. A 2022 survey found that two in five Americans thought civil war was at least somewhat likely" in the next decade. One political scientist speaks of the possibility of rightwing dictatorship in the US by 2030.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist