A quarter of a century ago, the far-right Austrian Freedom Party came second in the parliamentary elections. It then entered into a coalition government. Europe was aghast. Over a dozen EU member states reduced their cooperation with Austria. But this year, it’s different.
The Freedom Party has come first with 29 per cent of Sunday’s national vote. It’s unclear if it will be part of the next Austrian government. But there will be less shock if it does.
Far-right parties lead or form part of seven EU governments already, distributed from west to east, north to south, centre to periphery, founding states to the latest. Check this for variety: the Netherlands, Croatia, Finland, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia and Sweden.
That’s not counting France. Its new centrist government’s survival depends on the parliamentary support of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which also won the European elections. Nor does it count far-right successes in regional and other elections in Germany and the Czech Republic.
A century after fascism gathered momentum in Europe, its ghost is haunting the continent once more.
Like it was 100 years ago, it’s not only a European trend. “My nation first!” is a slogan whose variants can be found from Spain to India, Poland to Brazil, Italy to Turkey, Hungary to Japan. The far right is surging internationally.
The ultra-nationalist parties represent a spectrum. Anti-immigration rhetoric is common to all but it is not expressed everywhere in the same way. In Austria and Germany, Nazi slogans are knowingly repeated or echoed. In Italy, the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, couples her hostility to Europe’s migration policy with an anti-colonial rhetoric, saying that a major cause of African migration is the neo-colonial relationship between that continent and Europe.
Likewise, there is variation on workers’ rights, as research by Cas Mudde and Gabriela Greilinger shows. Some far-right parties are hostile to legislation for an adequate minimum wage and other provisions. But there are regional differences.
In Sweden and Denmark, the far right has pushed to downsize the welfare state and against strengthening workers’ rights. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán has weakened labour laws but also significantly expanded employment in the public sector. In southern Europe, the right’s voting record has been broadly supportive of laws that strengthen workers’ rights.
The rise of the right is fuelled by an apocalyptic rhetoric of an end of western civilisation and the collapse of the nation-state. However, the right’s electoral success is itself fuelling an equally apocalyptic rhetoric from centrist political parties, which speak of free societies being under threat.
The right thrives on international conspiracy theories: vaccines are massive experiments on human subjects; LGBTQ+ policies are systemic brainwashing of schoolchildren; climate change policies are a plot to introduce a centralised, technocratic world government (‘climate communism’); migration policies are designed to weaken social cohesion and labour conditions, so that super-rich global elites can control the rest.
The rise of the right is fuelled by an apocalyptic rhetoric of an end of western civilisation and the collapse of the nation-state- Ranier Fsadni
What used to be fringe theories are now represented by political movements with significant electoral appeal. Almost everything that the centrist parties have attempted is backfiring. Perhaps they should begin by listening attentively to the conspiracy theories and asking what, in centrist governments’ behaviour, makes the conspiracies sound plausible.
Gordon Brown, the former UK prime minister, has put his finger on half the problem. He says the centrists have surrendered to the far-right. Some choose to make selective alliances or even enter into governing coalitions.
Worse, Brown says, is adopting part of the far-right agenda, such as on migration, because that will not hold the far-right at bay. It will increase the far-right vote (as people will prefer the real thing rather than the imitation) and expand the demands. After migration, significant reversals will be demanded on environmental policies.
What is needed, according to Brown, is a political agenda that addresses the social discontent that is behind the far-right’s success. A progressive platform to boost jobs and raise standards of living.
If it were easy, it would have happened already. Countering the far right has to begin with recognition of centrist failures. The far-right generally promises a return to a rosy national past that never existed. But their voters are reacting against centrist political parties that offered a rosy future that never came.
What is remarkable about the rise of a nationalist populist like Donald Trump is not simply that he attracts the votes of people who never before voted for his party (and, indeed, some voted for Barack Obama twice). Trump has made two of Obama’s key pledges his own.
In 2008, Obama ran on extricating the US from wars and reforming healthcare. He did not succeed. In 2024, Trump is running on a similar platform: scaling back US military commitment abroad and trimming the power of the pharmaceutical and processed food industries.
We know, from Trump’s first term, that he is better at appealing to grievances than delivering on his promises. But he owes his cross-party appeal, in part, to his success in taking what was once a progressive agenda and reformulating it as a nationalist populist one.
Demonising the voters only plays into the hands of the populists. It gives credence to their claim that mainstream politicians treat ordinary people like the enemy. A centrist political response has to be a platform that begins by taking the grievances seriously.
ranierfsadni@europe.com