Europe's far right has managed to gradually consolidate its position by capitalising on structural insecurities. Progressive forces are on the defensive, either imitating right-wing talking points or struggling to come up with a convincing alternative. To turn things around, Greens and the Left need to come together and provide answers to today’s existential threats, from climate change to the housing crisis, says Daphne Halikiopoulou, chair in comparative politics at the University of York in the UK, in a Q&A session.
Daphne Halikiopoulou: That said, I don’t think that what Europe is facing is a new phenomenon [with the rise of the far right]. [...] we saw the far right form a coalition government with the centre-right in Austria many years ago [in 2000]; we also saw Pim Fortuyn, a political predecessor of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, do very well in the early 2000s; Jean-Marie Le Pen made it to the second round [of the presidential election] in France in 2002. We’ve known for many years that there is an appetite for this kind of politics. What has changed is that first, these parties are now entering governments and making policy, and second, they’ve gained momentum and are more normalised.
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There are many different types of insecurities that drive voters to the far right. If you look closely, you’ll see that those with cultural concerns are very likely to vote for the far right, but they’re very few people. On the contrary, what the far right has been very successful in doing is actively capitalising on all sorts of insecurities that largely originate from economic concerns [...] there are many people convinced that immigrants are competitors in the labour market, that they’re taking away access to welfare, jobs, schooling, healthcare, etc. There are also many crises that are economic in nature. One example is the housing crisis, which is really driving voters. Finally, there’s the question of trust in institutions, and we see across Europe that there is a very strong correlation between declining levels of political trust and support for far-right parties.
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There are variations [in the shift how the far right is gaining ground in Europe]. In the Netherlands, for example, the far right is still more or less on the economic right wing rather than in favour of a strong welfare state. In Eastern Europe, because of the communist past, a focus on welfare doesn’t sell, and it’s used only occasionally. Far-right rhetoric in Eastern Europe is more about policies that perpetuate the nation, such as measures encouraging families to have more children.
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Many left-wing parties have tried to copy the Right, albeit in a more palatable way. They start saying: “We appreciate that immigration is an issue, and we’ll deal with it in a more acceptable and ‘mainstream’ way.” This is really not an effective strategy, although I understand why parties do that: they think it will be a way to garner votes when elections are near. What this actually does, however, is increase the salience of issues that are “owned” by the far right.
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It’s very good news for the far right and very bad news for the Left [that the EU adopted new fiscal rules last year that would result in several EU member states being forced to implement austerity measures]. Austerity really triggers votes for the far right. It is essentially a greenhouse creating the conditions to make insecurity grow among the general population.
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I think this is a very dangerous strategy [what some analysts suggest that the best way to defeat the far right is to let it govern, so that people realise that it doesn’t solve the crises they’re experiencing]. Perhaps you can observe that in some countries the far right won and then lost. But it has become much more persistent as a political force. Look at the FPÖ in Austria: it was in a coalition government, then the government collapsed because of the Ibiza affair [a corruption scandal involving the FPÖ’s leadership in 2019], and now it won the elections.
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You see it in the UK as well. [The Eurosceptic right-wing populist party] UKIP was never electorally successful, but it was successful in terms of supplying a narrative. It was able to convince [then-Prime Minister David] Cameron to call the 2016 Brexit referendum, and this year Reform UK [a far-right party led by Nigel Farage, the former leader of UKIP] has five MPs in the House of Commons. I am very sceptical of this strategy.
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[The far right] is powerful not because of the insecurities [of people], but because it successfully capitalises on them, and because of what other parties have failed to do [...] There are people who cannot afford to rent flats in Europe anymore – this is the next big crisis, and it is also a green issue, so we need parties who are truly able to address it.
We also need to have parties that build a narrative on how they will deal with people’s insecurities properly rather than returning to austerity. Maybe the Greens and the Left have to come together with a narrative about who they are rather than what they’re fighting against.