The far right has had a remarkable year in a number of European countries, obtaining good results – and actually winning – elections held in countries such as Italy, Sweden, France and Portugal. The rise of the far right was facilitated by a plethora of factors, including demographic changes, major events or crises and Russia’s manipulations. Are we truly headed towards a Europe dominated by the far right, or is there a limit to this growing phenomenon?
The far right is gaining ground in Europe
Giorgia Meloni will be the new Prime Minister of Italy following the September 25 election. For the first time in the history of this country, a woman will take over as president of the Council of Ministers. Also for the first time since the end of World War II, Italy will have a Parliament dominated by a center-right alliance led by a party that is the heir to Benito Mussolini’s Republican Fascist Party. We are talking about the Brothers of Italy led by Giorgia Meloni, which after winning the September 25 ballot will become the largest party representing the radical and populist right in Western Europe, a position previously held by the Swiss People’s Party, with 25% of voters’ choices.
The victory of the Italian far right comes just two weeks after the nationalist Swedish Democrats won second place in the legislative elections held in Sweden. The result is incredible, as the Swedish Democrats will now hold 73 of the 349 seats in the Riksdag, the unicameral Parliament of Sweden. The string of victories reported by the nationalist right in 2022 started with the former National Front, the present-day National Rally, becoming the second-largest party in France after Renaissance.
Yet the list of parties in the far-right family is much longer, extending to regions such as the Iberian Peninsula, where a far-right party managed to secure representation in the Portuguese Parliament for the first time since 1974, when the right-wing authoritarian regime was ousted. In Spain, on the other hand, Vox is already controlling decision-making at regional level, and the party is very likely to dominate Parliament in the near future.
Far-right populism, the key to securing power
Any democracy has its milestones, when new parties are born as a result of new generations striving to fashion themselves a new political identity and break with the past. There are key moments in history that create the circumstances and contexts that influence the goals and identity of political players, which shape citizens’ political beliefs. This is a long-term process whose effects can be perceived only with the passage of time. Yet I would dwell on Europe’s recent history, more specifically the year 2008, which I see as a turning point for the rise of the far right we are witnessing today. 2008 was the year of the economic recession. There’s no secret that populist, nationalist and extremist rhetoric is fuelled by economic, social, cultural and political crises. How would ordinary taxpayers describe this particular crisis in a nutshell? Banks, huge profits, liquidity crisis, austerity, unemployment.
What could the European Union do in the face of this rising tide? Pretty much what the USA did. More specifically, introducing very unpopular measures designed to keep the budget deficit in check. Such economic measures will eventually widen the gap between, let’s say, the privileged and the rest of the population. And what does the far right do in the given context? It takes advantage, setting itself up as the mouthpiece of the many and neglected. The very names of extreme-right factions, regardless of the country, speak volumes about this reality. The names more often than not refer to nationality (the Brothers of Italy or the Swedish Democrats), or include the words people, national, etc.
The voter-appealing discourse emerged in the absence of real solutions that the traditional left and right wings were supposed to offer while in power. All we’ve seen in recent years are but small variations of the same pattern that has been cynically put into action with the sole purpose of robbing representative institutions of their true meaning and turning the voting process in something that is closer to a ritual. This might also explain the poignant electoral absenteeism, a growing phenomenon in recent years which the far right has certainly capitalized on. From Viktor Orbán’s FIDESZ to Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, the discourse of the extremist right wing contains a few elements that are common to all parties: chauvinism, xenophobia doubled by an anti-immigration discourse and anti-establishment populism. The latter is particularly appealing to masses of voters whom the radical right succeeds in convincing they are not truly represented by traditional parties, or that the current democracies seem powerless when leveling up to the mighty corporations. Conventional parties are often described as incapable of solving the society’s current problems.
The Dutch Professor Cas Mudde, the co-founder of the European Consortium for Political Research), claims that populism is in fact a strategy to gain power.
Russia and the European far right
At present, the far right is gaining momentum against the backdrop of Putin’s war, but also due to the sky-rocketing energy bills. It’s almost impossible not to think of a link between Russian propaganda, Russian money and the radical right in Europe. Obviously, we can, however, think of various ways Moscow can use to fund far-right parties, but I think the most obvious example is provided by Marine Le Pen, who in recent years got as much as 10 million EUR in loans from a Russian bank that in the meantime went bankrupt.
Listening to Putin’s raving speech occasioned by the ceremony held in Moscow to celebrate the illegal annexation of the four Ukrainian territories, his words struck me like a lightning bolt. Here is what Putin says, among other things:
“Do we really want, here, in our country, in Russia, instead of 'mum' and 'dad', to have 'parent No. 1', 'parent No. 2', 'No. 3'? Have they gone completely insane? Do we really want ... it drilled into children in our schools ... that there are supposedly genders besides women and men, and children to be offered the chance to undergo sex change operations? ... We have a different future, our own future”.
Here is what the future president of the Council of Ministers in Italy, Giorgia Meloni, said about family in a 2019 speech:
“Why is family seen as the enemy? Why does family breed anxiety? There is only one answer to these questions: because family defines us, it’s what shapes our identity, because everything that defines us has now become the enemy, because there are those who want to rob us of our identity and turn us into slaves, the perfect consumers. They attack our national identity, they attack our religious identity, they attack our gender identity, they attack our family identity”. I came across a study published in the American digital library JSTOR, written by Prof. Beatrix Campbell of Leiden University, which offers a history of Russian interference in European politics. It all started in 1993 with the rise of the Liberal-Democratic Party in Russia, led by the ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who soon joined forces with the leader of the German far right and Jean Marie Le Pen, the founder and leader of the National Front in France. Prof. Beatrix Campbell believes Russia has provided far-right politicians who already had an anti-Brussels and anti-establishment discourse with a vast platform to further their agenda. Joint events were among the ways to disseminate their shared values. There’s one particular conference held in Kremlin in 2014, where the sole message was the promotion of the Christian family. Three other similar events, one hosted by Vienna, one by Moscow and one by Donetsk (!!!) focused on blocking liberal values and Brussels-endorsed policies targeting the LGBT community. These events led to the development of very close ties between populist leaders from Western Europe and those in Russia, Georgia and Bulgaria. So when in 2014 Le Pen’s daughter and heir, Marine, said that the annexation of Crimea was a legitimate move, there’s little chance such actions and behaviors might come across as odd today.
Yet apart from these events organized by the Russians with the sole purpose of pooling together populist ideologies and efforts, the far right also benefited from Moscow’s formidable propaganda machine that permeates democratic societies. This well-oiled mechanism disseminates ideas in traditional media or on other platforms regarding the futility of voting. How many times have you heard in recent years people claiming that “elections are useless because the wrong people win every time”? It’s a simple idea meant to discourage traditional voters from taking part in the election process. And even though we might assume the radical right enjoys widespread support, the facts say otherwise. If we take a closer look at the numbers, we will notice that Marine Le Pen made it to the second round of the French presidential election due to votes belonging from illiterate segments of the population. And the same goes for Italy and Sweden. The greater stake, then, is not how well politicians mobilize masses of voters, but to convince them their vote carries no weight. The purpose of these factions is to ultimately gain power.
The far right will continue to gain ground, although it’s unlikely it will dominate Europe
Whether we like it or not, the far right has already made it to the big league of global politics, also as a result of the structural changes undergone by society in recent years. The profile of the average European voter today has changed. The mass migrations of the 1950s and 1960s had a contribution of their own. Once integrated, the community of immigrants made their voice heard as late as the 1980s. Then, mankind was left in shock by the 9/11 tragic events, which gave rise to Islamophobia. Prior to this point in time, politics had mainly social and economic underpinnings. But these terrorist attacks shifted the focus on identity issues. The refugee crisis of 2015-2016 heightened anti-Muslim and anti-immigration sentiment across the world. In other words, there are some moments that seem to give fresh impetus to populist speech. But as a whole, the rise of populism is a gradual process, which in this particular case span over the course of four decades.
Will the far right continue to gain ground in Europe? It may very well do so. Are we headed towards a period of pan-European domination of the radical right? That might seem less likely. I believe the Brothers of Italy, the party that is now in power in the Italian Peninsula, will bear the burden of ruling not just the country, but the entire European populist construct. Failure at the top of Italian politics will shatter all the nicely wrapped dreams, sold to a society threatened by the rising tide of fake news.
