France on a knife edge.
With bated breath as riots spread across the country, people are breaking out of the suburbs – often socially deprived suburbs – after police killed a 17-year-old boy from a Franco-Algerian family near Paris this week.
Such riots are not unheard of in France. But the intensity of feeling that has gripped the country, whether among those who sympathize with the police or the Bagniers and the victim’s family, has not been seen in France since the summer of 2005.
And while President Macron is clearly trying to get things under control, his far-right political nemesis Marine Le Pen, with her tough security demands and anti-immigration message, may well be winning in the polls.
Look around Europe right now—north, south, east, west—and you’ll see far-right parties of various flavors—nostalgic nationalists, populist nationalists, ultraconservatives with neo-fascist roots, etc.—enjoying a remarkable resurgence.
Old taboos dating back to Europe’s devastating war against the Nazis and Fascist Italy in the 20th century – that is, the majority of voters believed you should never vote for the far right again, and mainstream political parties refused to cooperate with far-right groups – are slowly being eroded.
I was living in Vienna in 2000 when the centre-right first entered a coalition government with the far-right Freedom Party. It made headlines around the world. The EU even imposed diplomatic sanctions on Vienna.
The EU’s third-largest economy, Italy, is now ruled by Giorgia Maloney, head of a party with neo-fascist roots. In Finland, after 3 months of debate, far-right Finnish nationalists recently joined a coalition government.
In Sweden, the anti-immigration and anti-multiculturalism Sweden Democrats are the second-largest party in parliament supporting a right-wing coalition government.
In Greece, three hard-right parties won enough seats to enter parliament last Sunday, while in Spain, the controversial nationalist party Vox – the first successful far-right party in Spain since the death of fascist dictator Francisco Franco in 1975 – beat expectations. the last regional elections.
There is talk that they may form a coalition government with the Conservatives after the national election in three weeks.
In addition, there are ultra-conservative, authoritarian governments in Poland and Hungary.
The list really goes on and on.
Including even Germany, which is still so sensitive to its fascist past.
According to polls, the far-right AfD is now ahead of, or close to, Chancellor Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD). Last weekend, an AfD candidate won the position of local leader for the first time. SPD called it a “political destroyer of dams”.
So what’s going on? Are millions and millions of European voters really leaning towards the far right? Or is it more of a protest vote? A sign of polarization between urban liberal voters and the conservative rest? And what do we even mean when we describe parties as “far-right”?
Look at how tough some mainstream politicians can sound, especially before an election, when it comes to immigration – take Dutch centre-right Prime Minister Mark Rutte, or security – I’m looking at you, self-styled centrist Emmanuel Macron.
Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, says we are witnessing a huge paradox.
On the one hand, in recent years many mainstream politicians have adopted the slogans or positions of the far right, hoping to lose their supporters. But in doing so, they help make the far right more mainstream.
At the same time, a number of far-right parties in Europe have deliberately moved more towards the political center, hoping to attract more centrist voters.
Take, for example, the attitude towards Russia. A number of far-right parties, such as the League in Italy, Marine Le Pen in France and Austria’s Far Freedom Party, have traditionally had close ties to Moscow.
This became more than inconvenient after Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which forced party leaders to change their rhetoric.
Mark Leonard cites the far-right’s relationship with the EU as another example of their “centrification”.
You may recall that after the UK’s Brexit vote in 2016, Brussels feared a domino effect – Frexit (France leaving the EU), Dexit (Denmark leaving the EU), Italexit (Italy leaving the EU) and so on.
Many European countries at the time had deeply Eurosceptic populist parties that were successful, but over the years these parties felt obliged to stop campaigning for an exit from the EU or even the euro.
This seemed too radical for many European voters.
They looked at the social and political implications of Brexit for the UK, not to mention the debated economic impact, and many concluded that leaving the EU would further destabilize a world that already looks very unstable.
Think: the Covid pandemic, living next door to an aggressive, unpredictable Russia, worrying about China, struggling with a skyrocketing cost of living – millions of European families are still reeling from the effects of the 2008 economic crisis.
Polls show that the EU is currently more popular among Europeans than it has been for many years.
And so far, the right-wing parties are now talking about reforming the EU, not leaving it. And, according to forecasts, they will have high results in the elections to the European Parliament next year.
Georgina Wright, director of the European program at the Montaigne Institute, who lives in Paris, told me that she believes the far-right resurgence in Europe is largely due to dissatisfaction with the political mainstream. For example, 1 in 5 voters in Germany now say they are dissatisfied with their coalition government.
Wright said many voters in Europe are drawn to the outspokenness of far-right parties, and there is a palpable frustration that mainstream politicians don’t seem to have clear answers in three key areas of life:
- Identity issues – fear of open borders and erosion of national identity and traditional values
- Economics – rejection of globalization and resentment that children and grandchildren are not guaranteed a better future
- Social justice – the feeling that national governments do not control the rules that govern the lives of citizens
You can see how these issues also feed into the green energy debate in Europe.
In the Netherlands, the right-wing populist Citizen Farmers Movement made headlines this year by winning the largest number of seats of any party in the upper house of parliament after provincial elections.
In France, Emmanuel Macron clashed with so-called yellow vest protesters, including far-right groups, as he tried to raise petrol prices in an effort to encourage people to travel by car.
Meanwhile, in Germany, public anxiety and anger over finances are holding back the ruling Green Party from implementing the environmental reforms it has promised.
