Spyware against solidarity: Europe's digital drift to the far-right

In January 2025, it was revealed that multiple human rights activists and journalists in Italy were targeted with Graphite, a military-grade spyware developed by the Israeli company Paragon. Drawing on testimonies from affected individuals and research on authoritarianism, we show how the deployment of mercenary spyware against civil society actions serves as a tool for authoritarian regimes to weaponize digital technologies, consolidate control, and suppress dissent. We situate these developments within longer histories of digital authoritarianism and racialized surveillance, and call for urgent legal and political action to resist the normalization of such spyware across Europe.