Left–right political spectrum
The terms left-wing and right-wing are widely used in the United States, but as on the global level there is no firm consensus about their meaning. The only aspect that is generally agreed upon is that they are the defining opposites of the United States political spectrum. Left and right in the U.S. are generally associated with liberal and conservative respectively, although the meanings of the two sets of terms do not entirely coincide. Depending on the political affiliation of the individual using them, these terms can be spoken with varying implications. A 2005 poll of 2,209 American adults showed that "respondents generally viewed the paired concepts liberals and left-wingers and conservatives and right-wingers as possessing, respectively, generally similar political beliefs", but also showed that around ten percent fewer respondents understood the terms left and right than understood the terms liberal and conservative.
Right-wing populism
From the 1990s, right-wing populist parties became established in the legislatures of various democracies, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Romania and Sweden; and they entered coalition governments in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Chile, Finland, Greece, Italy, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Slovakia and Switzerland; and majority governments in India, Turkey, Hungary and Poland. Although extreme right-wing movements in the United States have been studied separately, where they are normally called "radical right", some writers consider them to be a part of the same phenomenon. Right-wing populism in the United States is also closely linked to paleoconservatism. Right-wing populism is distinct from conservatism, but several right-wing populist parties have their roots in conservative political parties. Other populist parties have links to fascist movements founded during the interwar period when Italian, German, Hungarian, Spanish and Japanese fascism rose to power.