LIVING as I do in the very heart of Glasgow’s city centre, it’s not unusual for me to be woken up in the wee small hours by raucous behaviour in the streets outside.

Most times it’s no more than revellers who have had one sherbet too many and consider themselves contenders for the TV talent show The Voice.

Early yesterday morning, however, the commotion had a more menacing air. On first hearing, the threatening voices raised in anger seemed like the all-too-familiar confrontation born out of football sectarianism that lurks in the city. But this time as I looked out of my bedroom window it was different.

“Polish ******* go home,” chanted a group of six or so young men at two others passing them by on the street. It was an ugly scene, one where violence from the group towards the two other men seemed imminent, but miraculously and fortunately never ensued.

The confrontation struck me as far from accidental, for this group of men had a sense of predatory purpose about them.

The slogans they chanted were not sectarian football mantras but politically explicit, leaving little doubt as to their racism and extreme right-wing allegiances.

It takes little imagination to consider what those who espouse such views are capable off. When hatred, racism, intolerance and anger are the order of the day then intimidation and violence are rarely far behind.

Every day the toxic rise of far-right extremism is playing out right here in our midst and further afield across the globe. Just this past week the world witnessed the most grotesque manifestation of this, when a gunman took the lives of 50 people, mainly Muslim worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Some in response have talked about the gunman being a so-called “lone wolf”, attacker but in so doing they miss a very important point.

It was my colleague Jason Burke of The Guardian, someone who knows a thing or two about the modi operandi of terrorists, who best summed up the shortcomings of such an interpretation.

“The idea that terrorists operate alone allows us to break the link between an act of violence and its ideological hinterland,” Burke rightly pointed out as far back as 2017.

It’s a crucial point, one that recognises that referring to such terrorists as “lone wolf” deceptively conceals the breeding ground from which most emerge or at the very least are influenced and shaped by.

Both the Christchurch attacker Brenton Tarrant and the Norwegian far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who murdered 77 people in 2011, were in contact with other far-right extremists at home and abroad, both in real life and online. Tarrant in particular has travelled extensively, including in Europe.

While admittedly for both men the breeding ground of their extremism lies in part on social media and the “Dark Net”, that is only one part of the story.

Far-right extremism doesn’t just linger in the dark recesses of the internet, it’s also been bolstered by the rise of populist politicians who have shifted the norms in political thinking.

On a global level many world leaders, whether wilfully or innocently, have become symbols for different far-right groups and individuals that engage in violence.

Wasn’t it US president Donald Trump who said last year there were “fine people” among white supremacists who gathered at Charlottesville?

Is it not Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban who rails against the supposed threat posed to “Christian identity” by an influx of Muslims? And what of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, reportedly referring to black activists as “animals” who should “go back to the zoo”, or Australian senator Fraser Anning referring to the Christchurch attack as “violent vigilantism”?

All of this helps legitimise or endorse language, attitudes, policies and actions that give political succour to those always prepared to take things further.

The more such leaders and far-right parties gain political power, the greater the propensity for some ordinary people to become motivated by their poisonous anti-foreigner rhetoric.

As my esteemed colleague Fintan O’Toole of The Irish Times once pointed out, it’s not easy to get people to give up their ideas of freedom and civility.

“Fascism doesn’t arise suddenly in an existing democracy … you have to do trial runs that, if they are done well, serve two purposes. They get people used to something they may initially recoil from; and they allow you to refine and calibrate,” observed O’Toole last year.

Within the right-wing political mainstream, that refining and recalibration continues unabated. Yesterday the far-right populist newcomer party Forum for Democracy (FvD) stunned the Dutch political establishment after winning the most votes in provincial elections.

The party is now expected to win 12% of the Dutch votes in the European Parliament elections in May. These elections this spring will be another litmus test for just how strong a grip the far right has on Europe. More and more here in our European neighbourhood far-right parties have established closer links with each other and now speak more confidently of sweeping away the traditional parties of the centre-left and centre-right across the Continent.

The notion that the far right lurks only on internet chat rooms or is nothing more than an occupant of the political hinterland is a dangerous and misguided one.

Emboldened in recent years by global events and mainstream responses it has rebranded itself even if beneath a veneer of “respectability” it keeps its underlying ideology of hate intact.

Far-right terrorism like that witnessed in Christchurch is the most extreme tactic of a global movement that over the past three decades has demonstrated that their ideas, no matter how toxic, can, if astutely presented, achieve electoral success. This capacity to percolate into the political mainstream is perhaps the far right’s greatest threat.

Its pernicious presence is all around us right now attacking mosques in New Zealand, winning votes in the Netherlands and right outside my bedroom window on the streets of Glasgow and other cities across Scotland and beyond.

Just as in the past, so now halting its rise and influence can only be done by joint action and multiple political players. We need to recognise that and confront the far right’s ugly face quickly and at every opportunity before it’s too late.