The Spanish elections last week did not go as many had predicted. The coalition of the center-right Popular Party and the far-right Vox party did not win power, mainly because Vox lost votes, while incumbent Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his social-democratic Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) fared better than expected.
Do the Spanish results tell us something deeper about European politics and the fate of the far right? Last year, the far right seemed to be on the march across Europe. In October, Giorgio Meloni became Italy's prime minister after her Italian Brothers party, with historical roots in the post-war neo-fascist social movement, won the most seats in the general election. In Finland, the reactionary Party of Finns entered the ruling coalition, while the survival of the Swedish government depends on the support of the equally reactionary Sweden Democrats.
In Greece, the recently formed neo-Nazi Spartans, run from prison by the former leader of the disbanded Golden Dawn, won 12 seats in the June elections and are one of three hard-right parties in parliament. In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) won the city council in Sonneberg, in eastern Germany, for the first time. In Austria, the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) is surging in the polls and is predicted to win next year's election. In France, few dismiss the possibility of Marine Le Pen becoming president after the elections in 2027. In Hungary and Poland, national-populist parties have long been in power.
All this causes some people to fear the return of fascism to Europe. For others, the failure of the Vox party points to the limits of the far right. "The narrative that Europe is veering towards the extreme right is exaggerated," claims political risk consultant Muchtaba Raman.
Europe is not on the brink of fascism. However, the influence of the extreme right on the political landscape of the continent should not be underestimated. From despised, marginalized positions, they moved to a central place in European governance and policy-making.
Far-right views, particularly on immigration and identity, have entered the mainstream. On immigration, many key ideas - the militarization of border controls, the mass incarceration and deportation of undocumented migrants, the insistence that refugees must seek asylum only outside the EU - have entered politics, not just in the EU. "Views that were once condemned, underestimated, despised and treated with loathing are becoming our common views," Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told reporters in 2016. "Today, people who advocate those views are welcomed as equal partners." Seven years later, it is more precisely.
The far-right's leitmotifs, from the "great replacement" - the conspiracy theory that elites are replacing white Europeans with migrants - to the belief that mass migration is driving white Europeans out of their "homeland" and the fear of falling birth rates among "native" Europeans, are now being recycled by prominent mainstream figures. of the right. At the same time, many on the far right have begun to change some of their positions to appear more acceptable, toning down their Euroscepticism and reducing their support for Vladimir Putin.
The sanitary cordon that once deprived the far right of its aura of respectability has almost disappeared. When the Freedom Party entered the government of Austria in 2000 in coalition with the center-right People's Party, European nations canceled diplomatic visits and threatened sanctions. "Europe can do without Austria. We don't need it," the then Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Louis Michel, commented disdainfully.
Today, few people think so, as extreme right-wing parties become an acceptable part of the government landscape. Last month, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister whose coalition government later collapsed over immigration policy, accompanied Meloni on a trip to Tunisia to hammer out a deal to curb migratory flows across the Mediterranean. Under Meloni, Italy has emerged at the forefront of EU immigration policy-making.
It sounds paradoxical that an organization that both supporters and opponents consider to be defined by its commitment to cosmopolitanism looks up to the far right. That cosmopolitanism, however, was always shallow. In his forthcoming book Eurobelle, Hans Kundnani, a researcher at the Chatham House Institute, suggests that the meaning of the concept of "European" for the EU has been placed in ethnic and civilizational frameworks from the beginning. "The European project," Kundnani argues, "is defined not only in opposition to the European past, but also in opposition to non-European Others."
This was made clear when von der Leyen was elected president of the European Commission in 2019. Among her first moves was to change the name of the vice-president's domain of responsibility for migration policy to "commissioner for the promotion of our European way of life", clearly giving the impression that migrants they represent an existential threat to European culture and identity. For Le Pen, Von der Leyen's move "confirms our ideological victory", as the EU is "forced to admit that immigration raises questions about the future of Europeans' way of life".
The irony in all this is that post-Brexit Britain, as some claim, now appears to be "the last liberal nation in Europe". The populist sentiment flourished mainly within the influence of Ukip and the Brexit Party, which have all but disappeared. It is a historical pattern that the chances of both fascist and communist parties are limited by the strength of the conservative and labor parties.
However, the difference between Britain and the rest of Europe is not so noticeable. Rwanda's deportation scheme and illegal immigration law reveal the extent to which policies that were on the fringes until a decade ago have been taken into the mainstream. From the view that Europe is "committing suicide" to the demand that Britons have to have more babies, many of the themes arising from the blurring of the line between the mainstream and the far right are also visible in the UK.
Paradoxically, when it comes to immigration, the public in Britain today is more liberal than most politicians. Yet the reluctance of the Labor Party to challenge reactionary claims, or to articulate an alternative vision, has allowed the right to dictate debate and develop unconscionable policies. The far right does not need to be in power for its ideas to spread, even within societies that consider themselves "liberal".
(The Guardian; Peščanik.net; translation: M. Jovanović)
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