Foreign Affairs
Right-wing parties are on the rise across the Old Continent.
Fratelli D’Italia party leader Giorgia Meloni attends a rally for the elections in Piazza Roma on May 30, 2022 in Monza, Italy. (Photo by Alessandro Bremec/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Across Europe, right-wing and national-conservative parties have scored remarkable victories in recent elections and are riding high in the polls. Disgruntled voters come in droves. Some liberal observers express fear of a coming right-wing “tsunami” in Europe.
Establishments have for a long time excluded right-wing newcomers from power. But that is changing. Italy has had a staunchly right-wing government since the fall. The right is now on a roll in many countries of Europe, from Germany to France and Spain, as well as in Scandinavia and central-Eastern Europe. The “firewall” or “cordon sanitaire” policies to keep right-wing parties away from power have failed or are set to fail.
The main driver of support for the right in Europe is opposition to out-of-control mass immigration. Rising costs of living and high energy prices since the Ukraine war have also fueled discontent. Most right-wing parties are also skeptical of the E.U. But foreign policy leanings are not always consistent; attitudes towards Russia since the war in Ukraine have been a source of discord among the parties of the right. I will return to the issue later in this essay. First, let’s go on a short political tour d’horizon to acquaint readers with the scale of changes in the “Old Continent.”
We’ll begin in Germany, a country that, until ten years ago, did not have any noteworthy party to the right of the ruling Christian Democrats (CDU), then led by Angela Merkel, and their Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU). Merkel made the strategic decision to shift to the left, abandoning the traditional conservative wing and creating a vacuum on the right. This was filled by the Euroskeptic newcomer party Alternative for Germany (AfD), founded in 2013 during the Euro crisis. Merkel’s decision in 2015 to keep the borders open for more than one million migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa boosted the challenger party. Despite headwinds and ostracism from the political establishment and the media, the “far right” AfD entered the federal parliament, the Bundestag.
In recent polls, support for AfD has doubled to 20 percent or more, boosted by public anger at a controversial proposal for a gas boiler ban by the Green Party minister of economics and climate. In polls, AfD is now clearly ahead of the ruling Social Democrats party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. His three-party coalition government (made up of the SPD, the Greens, and the liberal Free Democrats Party) has plunged to unseen levels of unpopularity. A full 79 percent of voters say they are unhappy, a recent survey for public broadcaster ARD revealed.
The rise of the right in Germany has generated alarm and even hysteria among the other parties. They almost suffered a stroke when an AfD candidate gained a historic first district election victory in Sonneberg, in the eastern state of Thuringia. The Verfassungsschutz (a domestic spy agency tasked to “protect” the constitution, but prone to political abuse by suppressing inconvenient opposition groups) has denounced AfD as a “suspected case” of extremism. But official stigmatization appears to have become a blunted weapon. Voters simply don’t care anymore about such a public warning.
The CDU is trapped in a difficult situation. They have pledged to uphold a brandmauer (firewall) against the right-wing rival. But this policy is getting increasingly harder to sustain, especially in the eastern states of Germany, the former GDR, where between a quarter or even a third of voters support AfD.
Strategies of total exclusion, whether named “firewall” (or cordon sanitaire as they called it in France and Belgium), are bound to fail if they run against political reality. When a rival party on the right gets too big, it cannot permanently be excluded from participating in legislative and executive power in a democracy.
We are witnessing this in France. An Ifop poll in April found that Marine Le Pen was now the most popular politician in the country, ahead of President Macron, who is seen as aloof, especially by the ordinary people struggling with his unpopular pension reforms. Now France is again faced with violent unrest in the banlieues, the suburbs, predominantly populated by migrants of African and Arab descent. Race riots have recently erupted in Paris, Marseille, Lyon, and many smaller places.
The nights of anarchy and fiery vandalism confirm Le Pen’s case that something has seriously gone wrong with immigration and integration. Amid widespread pessimism about the future of France, Le Pen might well become the next president. In mid-June, before the riots broke out, Jacqueline Maquet, an M.P. with Macron’s “Renaissance party,” told the Sunday newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche: “I have the impression of a tsunami advancing.” Faced with this tide shift, the cordon sanitaire will break.
Likewise, in Sweden, excluding a successful right-wing contender to the status quo has not worked. After years of fighting among immigrant drug gangs, with almost daily shootings and explosions, voters’ anger about lax migration and security policies has strengthened the right-wing Sweden Democrats. To gain respectability, they opted strategically for moderation in language and removed some of their more radical elements. Eventually, the firewall against them crumbled.
The Sweden Democrats broke through in the elections last September. Now, the new center-right coalition depends on their support. Neighboring Finland has also turned to the right with the “populist” right-wing Finns Party last month becoming a formal part of the new coalition government (though they are already embroiled in scandals about alleged racism).
Most remarkable of all recent right-wing successes, Giorgia Meloni’s party Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) also achieved their breakthrough in September, and as first female prime minister she has since led a remarkably stable right-wing government. Despite being vilified by the left as being “post fascist,” the smart, hard-nosed, and charming Meloni gained a broad following, confronting the “woke” left, their ideas of social engineering, and LGBT propaganda.
Her party is by far the most popular in Italy, out-flanking Matteo Salvini’s Lega and the late Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. Her government combines traditional social conservatism with a harder line against illegal immigrants. The recent decisions of the E.U. leaders to redouble their efforts to halt small boats with asylum seekers in the Mediterranean reflect a shift in the consensus. What was once a “far right” demand is now the new normal.
Spain is the latest case-in-point of a turn to the right. Recent regional and local elections have handed the conservative Partido Popular (P.P.) huge gains while the more hard-right Vox party, established in 2013, greatly increased its number of councilors. Embattled socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was forced to call a snap general election. The likely outcome of the election on July 23 is a victory for P.P., led by the moderate conservative Alberto Nunez Feijoo, and a coalition with VOX (“Vox” is Latin for “voice”). Under the leadership of Santiago Abascal, it has rapidly become Spain’s third-largest party. Despite the left’s cries about a return to “Franco-era” politics, VOX is now becoming socially accepted.
This short journey through several European countries shows the extent to which right-wing movements are on the advance. We see signs of an emerging “Conservative International” or “Right-Wing International.” This was evidenced at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gathering in Budapest in May. More than 600 conservatives from Europe and North America attended, seeking common ground and understanding. Hungarian Prime Minister Orban opened the event with a speech entitled “No migration, no gender, no war.”
There is consensus on the European right against mass migration and the aggressive promotion of gender ideology. However, what exactly Orbán meant by “no war” was left in limbo. He evaded explaining how to stop the war in Ukraine. This is one of the current key issues that divide the different rightwing parties or prevent them from effectively forming a true “Right International.”
In the European Parliament in Brussels, the rightwing parties have failed to form a unified group. Instead there are two major competing rightwing factions: the Eurosceptic ECR and the more hard-right ID (plus a dozen non-affiliated MEPs from Hungary’s Fidesz party, which got expelled from the center-right European People’s Party (EPP). All these parties are opposed to the formation of a European super-state to replace the nation-states, and all of them are opposed to the left’s social engineering experiments.
If they would combine, an allied right would easily secure around 150 seats in the Brussels parliament (of the total 705), becoming the second-largest faction right behind the European People’s Party—the party of Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. A combined right could be far larger than the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) faction.
However, a unification of all the parties on the right is unlikely to happen. There are too many differences of opinion. During the Euro crisis, those differences were mainly about the Euro, ECB policies and fiscal transfers and subsidies, and now, since the war in Ukraine started, there is major dissent on foreign policy and Russia.
Some right-wing parties are vehemently pro-NATO and support the U.S. foreign policy line. Poland’s conservative PiS party is the most vocal proponent of large arms supplies for Ukraine’s fight against Russia. (Ironically, a national-conservative, anti-woke government in Warsaw finds much common ground in foreign policy with the woke Biden administration, which does not reciprocate the favors and has supported LGBT protests in Warsaw against the PiS government.)
Other right-wing leaders side strongly with Ukraine as well. Italy’s Giorgia Meloni has made this clear; she does not waiver in her support for NATO. On the other hand, Hungary’s Victor Orban (with whom both Meloni and VOX’s Abascal are good friends) has been reluctant in his support, and many other right-wing parties like Germany’s AfD are opposed to weapons deliveries fearing that the war might escalate and become a pan-European conflict—a war of Russia against the West waged on Central European soil. Some currents on the right also harbor Russian sympathies.
Some of the skepticism of the war is a reaction to the overbearing enthusiasm for the conflict on the part of the left. Germany’s Greens have turned from pacifists to bellicists; left-wingers who refused to serve in the army now call for the most lethal tanks, fighter jets, and long-range missiles for Ukraine. It could be argued that their stance is irrational and inconsequential because it contradicts their otherwise anti-nationalist attitude while Ukrainians are fighting a nationalistic fight to defend their homeland. Ukrainians at the front are not rainbow warriors but nationalistic patriots, which the Left usually loathes.
But because support for Ukraine is now, in the eyes of many, intertwined with other woke causes such as diversity, LGBT rights, and the rest of the Biden administration’s globalist agenda, some on the European right believe that Russia might be a counterforce against a woke West. For years, some European right-wing parties, like the Austrian FPO and France’s National Rally (R.N.), entertained close relationships with Putin’s party. Le Pen’s party even received a large credit from a Russian-affiliated bank.
Many have come to regret this. At Rassemblement National (R.N.), the young president Jordan Bardella acknowledged “a collective naivety” concerning Putin’s intentions with the R.N. Since the invasion, the party has somewhat departed from its traditionally pro-Russian course and pledged to support Ukraine while at the same time not falling for absolutist, hawkish rhetoric.
Other right-wing movements are, however, more confused. You find odd neo-neutralist ideas and even absurdly naive pacifist musings in some corners of the European right. Some advocate “Eurasian” conceptions, some dream of a dissolution of NATO without giving any realistic answer about what might replace it. Albeit relatively marginal, these voices obscure the debate and, at the same time, underscore the need for an authentic and realistic conception for a common European security policy.
The right in Europe does not have one. They lack serious think tanks and thinkers on security policy who could lead a conversation about a future European security architecture that would be less dependent on the dominant influence of Washington. While American cultural and military hegemony is waning globally, the E.U. does not appear to be in a position to become a real foreign policy power that is able to define and pursue its geopolitical interests. First, they lack the necessary military power; second, they lack a clear conception of their geopolitical interests. Some on the left even deny that one should pursue geopolitical interests beyond the spreading of human rights globally.
Germany, the economic heavyweight but militarily a sick man of the continent, is a case-in-point. The industrial powerhouse (now struggling because of irrational Green energy policies and waning traditional sectors like the car industry) is a country that is intensely insecure about its approach. It has long generated resentment among its European neighbors who feel dominated and, in turn, seek ways to make Germany the paymaster in the E.U. At the same time, Germany has attracted the largest numbers of (irregular) migrants and has destabilized the continent with an irrational open-border policy. With its more generous social benefits, “Germoney” is a magnet for migration. And Berlin left the dirty work of securing the outer borders to others in Southern Europe while simultaneously accusing them of racism.
For decades, Germany naively believed they needed neither borders nor a proper military. The Bundeswehr, Germany’s army, is in a pitiful state after 30 years of underfunding. Former U.S. President Donald Trump was right when he accused Europeans, and Germans in particular, of underinvesting and free-riding in defense matters.
In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Chancellor Scholz announced a zeitenwende, a turning point in history. More investment in security and the army was promised, but it has not yet materialized. One also hoped for a more realistic foreign policy. But this hope has been dashed. Germany’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock from the Green party, a relatively young politician, is taking pride in her “feminist,” human rights-based approach. Unfortunately, Baerbock is also very inexperienced and gaffe-prone.
In January, she declared out of the blue, “We are fighting a war against Russia,” a statement that her aides quickly dismissed as “lost in translation.” Luckily, not too many take her words seriously. Baerbock is considered a bit of a joke by quite many in Germany. Her English-language mistakes are regularly mocked. Two weeks ago, in Pretoria, she congratulated South Africa for being a “bacon (!) of hope”. The German Green party exemplifies an embarrassing mix of ignorance and arrogance when lecturing others on becoming enlightened, modern, diverse and post-national world citizens.
For decades, Germany’s left-liberal intellectual and political elites indulged in the fancy dream of a pacifist, multicultural, post-national identity, as advocated by philosopher Jurgen Habermas. Berlin’s morally arrogant posture and even bullying against those who do not share those ideas (such as Hungary and Poland), and those who resist mass migration and the woke progressive agenda have since backfired and generated resentment against Germany.
Subscribe Today
Get weekly emails in your inbox
At the heart of the problems lies a broken national identity on the part of Germany, which is incapable of seeing itself as “normal nation” with national interests. Therefore, Germany is also incapable of understanding why other nations—the East Europeans, Italians, Spaniards, French, etc.—want to be nations and want to preserve their nation-states, independence, and self-government. Germany’s elites now look with horror at the wave of right-wing governments in several neighboring countries. But Germany must come to terms with its own identity and cease trying to escape reality into post-national fantasies.
Europe will be transformed if the center of political gravity shifts towards more conservative, realist positions. At the same time, the world is moving from American dominance towards a multipolar geopolitical setting, with the U.S. being challenged by China. This poses huge challenges for Europe, and Germany—whose industries, like the car manufacturers, have already become dangerously dependent on the Chinese market—especially. Europe needs to devise a security strategy that promotes competitiveness, greater innovation, and resilience, while decreasing dependencies on Chinese markets and critical raw materials.
Europe cannot abandon the alliance with the U.S., since that would expose European military and economic weaknesses and might exacerbate internal rivalries or struggles for preeminence. But Europe must emancipate itself from ill-judged interventionist U.S. military adventures. We should become more restrained and more focused on solving our problems—and America should, too.
>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : The American Conservative – https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-rise-of-the-european-right/