I sort of agree with the broad point you’re making with regard to the misuse of the modifier “far” to describe political leaning, but I find it odd that your first example is an anecdote about your friend describing Bolsonaro as “far right.”

Generally speaking, it’s true that there is a difference between the way the public just attaches “far” to the politics of their enemies to characterize them extreme versus the specific, concrete sense in which political scientists use it. But the characterization of Bolsonaro as far-right is not a misuse of the term.

He’s a homophobic bigot who expressed open admiration for a military junta that liquidated its political enemies using physical force and torture. He has said racist and genocidal things about indigenous people and the policy of Amazon deforestation, where some indigenous peoples live, is tantamount to ethnic cleansing.

If I can’t call that “far-right,” then I ask you: What merits the descriptor?

The more valid examples you give is the inaccurate labeling of centrists like Nancy Pelosi as “far-left” by the American right (something that has happened). Then you try to draw an equivalence raising the absurd idea of Lindsay Graham being labeled “far-right” (something that literally has never happened ever).

I would argue that by and large, the Republican Party has become captured by the far-right. Tucker Carlson, the most popular media figure on Fox, has a huge fanbase on Stormfront. Dylann Roof watches his show daily. The Neo-Nazi American Identity Movement lists his book Ship of Fools as recommended reading.

So I honestly think this is more of a problem on the right that’s a result of them actually being legitimately so far to the right that a moderate technocrat like Obama is the second coming of Josef Stalin. When you try to “both sides” the issue it just comes off as weak and out of touch with the actual facts on the ground.