Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Europe’s Far Right

  • What to Expect of Italy’s Next Government

    Giorgia Meloni
    Brothers of Italy party leader Giorgia Meloni speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, February 26, 2022 (Vox España)

    Italy’s next coalition government will likely consist of three right-wing parties: the Brothers of Italy, League and Forza Italia (Forward Italy) are polling at close to 50 percent support, which should be enough to give them control of both chambers of parliament.

    For the first time, the Brothers of Italy, who split from Forza in 2012, would place first and provide the prime minister: Giorgia Meloni.

    The (formerly Northern) League, led by Matteo Salvini, won the election in 2018, but conservatives were disappointed when it formed a government with the left-populist Five Star Movement, and even more disappointed when Salvini left the government in a failed bid to force snap elections.

    Forza has been in third place since their leader, Silvio Berlusconi, lost reelection in 2013.

    The parties have released a joint manifesto for the election in September that is light on detail but nevertheless provides the best clues about what a right-wing government might do. Here are the main points. (more…)

  • Sway with Me: How Italy’s Salvini Lost His Credibility

    Herbert Kickl Matteo Salvini
    Herbert Kickl and Matteo Salvini, the interior ministers of Austria and Italy, meet in Brussels, July 12, 2018 (European Council)

    Italy’s Matteo Salvini tried to be all things to all people, and failed.

    The leader of the (formerly Northern) League aspired to become the next Silvio Berlusconi: the uncontested leader of the Italian right. To prove he could govern, he formed a coalition with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and later supported the unity government of Mario Draghi.

    But you can’t govern in Italy without making compromises, and that’s not something far-right voters tend to reward. Salvini has oscillated between mock statesmanship and populism, giving his supporters whiplash. Giorgia Meloni’s postfascist Brothers of Italy now threaten to eclipse him. (more…)

  • Trumpification of the Spanish Right in Madrid

    Isabel Díaz Ayuso
    Regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso of Madrid, February 23 (Comunidad de Madrid)

    Spanish conservatives hope the third time will be the charm.

    In 2018, spooked by the return of the far right, they chose the reactionary Pablo Casado as their leader over the center-right Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría. Casado pulled the People’s Party to the right, arguing for a clampdown on Catalan nationalism, lower immigration and tighter abortion laws. Voters didn’t approve. The party fell from 33 to 17 percent support in the election and lost over half its seats in Congress.

    In the next election, seven months later, Casado doubled down. He refused to attack far-right leader Santiago Abascal and proposed to criminalize Catalan separatism. The conservatives did better, going up to 21 percent, but they still failed to defeat the Socialists. Abascal’s Vox also increased its vote share, to 15 percent.

    The lesson from other European countries is that center-right parties can never outbid the far right, which is always willing to go a step further. Moving to the right in order to shrink the distance between mainstream and far right isn’t a winning strategy either. It makes it easier for conservative voters to switch.

    In Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso is nevertheless attempting the same strategy — and she might win. (more…)

  • Foreign Press Are Missing the Story in the Dutch Election

    Mark Rutte
    Prime Minister Mark Rutte answers questions from Dutch lawmakers in The Hague, September 17, 2020 (Tweede Kamer)

    The big story in this year’s election in the Netherlands is that all parties, including the ruling VVD (of which I am a member), have moved to the left. As a result, there is broad consensus for deficit spending, far-reaching climate legislation, closer defense integration in Europe, more central government involvement in housing and raising corporate tax.

    Not all foreign media have noticed. Many are still obsessed with yesterday’s story: the far right. (more…)

  • Support for Anti-EU Parties Falls During Pandemic

    European flags Brussels
    Flags of the European Union outside the Berlaymont building in Brussels, July 22, 2016 (European Commission)

    If the coronavirus pandemic is giving Europeans doubts about the EU, it isn’t showing up in support for Euroskeptic parties. (more…)

  • Far Right Comes to Sánchez’ Rescue in Spain

    Santiago Abascal
    Spanish Vox party leader Santiago Abascal gives a speech in Valencia, February 22, 2018 (Vox España)

    Sometimes bad people do good things. Spain’s neo-Francoist party Vox (Voice) has given Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez a majority for his plan to spend Spain’s €140 billion share of the EU’s €750 billion coronavirus recovery fund.

    Vox had criticized the plan for its “opaque” oversight during a debate in Congress, but when it became clear the conservative People’s Party (PP) would vote against it, the far right spied an opportunity.

    “We regret that in the worst moment of these 42 years of democracy, PP is not the opposition but the absolute destruction,” a Vox spokesman thundered.

    That’s a little rich coming from a party that wants to reverse Spain’s democratization in important ways, including by abolishing regional autonomies, teaching a more Franco-friendly version of twentieth-century history in middle schools and weakening women’s rights.

    But it is also an example of how multiparty democracy can make a country more governable. (more…)

  • There’s Only So Much Race Can Tell Us

    Democratic voters Davidson North Carolina
    Democratic voters in Davidson, North Carolina listen to a speech, October 12, 2016 (Hillary for America/Alyssa S.)

    American journalists continue to parse the November electorate, specifically the Latino vote.

    Matthew Yglesias, formerly of Vox, has a good newsletter about Donald Trump’s gains with Latino voters in which he links to Harry Enten’s analysis for CNN. It turns out Trump didn’t appeal to just Latinos of Cuban, Nicaraguan and Venezuelan descent, who may have been alarmed by Democratic flirtations with socialism given the experience in their home countries; he did better with Latinos of all backgrounds compared to four years ago.

    This is fascinating to political junkies like us, but having just moved back to the Netherlands, where the campaign for the general election in March is slowly getting underway, I’m reminded that this sort of demographic analysis is almost entirely absent in Europe. (more…)

  • EU Must Hold Firm in Rule-of-Law Dispute with Hungary, Poland

    Viktor Orbán Giuseppe Conte
    Prime Ministers Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Giuseppe Conte of Italy meet with other European leaders in Brussels, February 21 (European Council)

    Hungary and Poland are holding up approval of the EU’s seven-year budget and coronavirus recovery fund, worth a combined €1.8 trillion, vowing to jointly veto so long as the rest of the bloc insists on tying funds to compliance with the rule of law.

    The countries’ far-right governments, which are already being probed by the EU for politicizing their judicial systems, claim they are defending national sovereignty from foreign interference.

    Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, said he would not “subject Hungary to a situation where a simple majority imposes issues upon the Hungarian people they do not want.”

    The problem with that statement: 25 of the EU’s 27 member states support the proposed rule-of-law conditionality, as do seven in ten Hungarians and Poles.

    EU-wide support is as high as 77 percent, according to a poll commissioned by the European Parliament. (more…)

  • Dutch Far-Right Forum for Democracy Implodes

    Sorry for the lack of new posts in recent weeks. I’ve moved back to the Netherlands from Barcelona and finding and furnishing an apartment has taken up most of my time.

    Good news was awaiting me here, though. Forum for Democracy, a Putin-friendly, far-right upstart that only a year ago looked like a credible challenger to Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s center-right liberal party, is on the verge of collapse. Thierry Baudet, the party’s co-founder and leader, has stepped down.

    Baudet — one of the few Donald Trump admirers in Dutch politics — broke with other party leaders to defend Forum’s youth wing, which for the second time this year was revealed to be a hotbed of far-right extremism. Het Parool of Amsterdam reported this weekend that multiple members had shared neo-Nazi content in the movement’s WhatsApp group.

    In May, the party ejected three members for sharing similar content.

    Baudet has winked at the alt-right with calls to defend “boreal” (northern) civilization from cosmopolitan liberal elites, who would “dilute” Dutch society by allowing immigration.

    He claimed on Monday that the youth wing had been the victim of a “trial by media”. (more…)

  • Right-Wing Italians Swap Salvini’s for Even More Right-Wing Party

    Matteo Salvini Marine Le Pen Harald Vilimsky Michał Marusik
    Far-right party leaders Matteo Salvini of Italy, Marine Le Pen of France, Harald Vilimsky of Austria and Michał Marusik of Poland give a news conference in Strasbourg, May 11, 2016 (European Parliament/Fred Marvaux)

    It’s been a bad few months for Italy’s populist right-wing leader, Matteo Salvini.

    First his erstwhile governing partner, the Five Star Movement, and the opposition Democrats outmaneuvered him by teaming up to avoid snap elections which polls predicted Salvini’s League would win.

    Now his antics in reaction to the government’s coronavirus policy are falling flat.

    Salvini and his party “occupied” parliament (refusing to leave the chamber) to demonstrate against the COVID-19 quarantine. He has tweeted out disinformation about the disease, claiming it was created in a Chinese lab. Few Italians care.

    Polls find two in three have little faith in the EU anymore, which many Italians feel has been too slow to come to their aid. (Italy has had one of the worst outbreaks of coronavirus disease in the world.) Yet it hasn’t given the Euroskeptic Salvini, who once argued for giving up the euro, a boost. (more…)

  • Orbán Abolishes Democracy in Hungary

    Viktor Orbán Benjamin Netanyahu
    Prime Ministers Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel speak in Brasília, Brazil, January 2, 2019 (Facebook/Viktor Orbán)

    I try to avoid Nazi-era comparisons, since they’re seldom appropriate, but Viktor Orbán isn’t making it easy. The only thing that could make his power grab in Hungary more like the Enabling Act of 1933 is if, like the Reichstag fire, COVID-19 really had been manufactured (in a Chinese lab funded by George Soros, if we are to believe Russia’s disinformation).

    Using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse, Orbán has dissolved parliament and postponed all elections — indefinitely.

    The Constitutional Court technically still functions, but it is packed with Orbán loyalists and provides no real oversight. For all intents and purposes, Orbán now rules alone. (more…)

  • Outrage over Right-Wing Alliance in Thuringia Is Overblown

    Politicians in Berlin are up in arms about an alliance between the mainstream right and far-right Alternative for Germany in the central state of Thuringia.

    Lars Klingbeil, secretary general of the ruling Social Democrats, spoke of a “low point in Germany’s postwar history.”

    Chancellor Angela Merkel called the election of a liberal state premier with far-right support “unforgivable”.

    Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the head of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and presumptive successor, said it was a “bad day for Thuringia and a bad day for Germany.”

    Hitler comparisons are rife, coming even from party leaders in Brussels.

    This is all a little over the top. (more…)

  • Swedish Center-Right Adapts to Rise of Far Right

    Ulf Kristersson Gabrielius Landsbergis
    Swedish Moderate Party leader Ulf Kristersson listens to Gabrielius Landsbergis of the Lithuanian Homeland Union during a meeting of European conservative party leaders in Brussels, June 20 (EPP)

    Sweden’s center-right Moderates have broken ranks with other mainstream parties by holding talks with the far-right Sweden Democrats.

    The Moderates, who most recently governed Sweden from 2006 to 2014, had until now backed a cordon sanitaire around the Sweden Democrats, who are still seen as beyond by pale by centrists and leftists.

    But years of political isolation haven’t made the Sweden Democrats less popular. On the contrary. They have risen from 13 percent support in last year’s election to 25 percent in opinion polls, tying with the ruling Social Democrats and ahead of the Moderates, who are at 17-19 percent. (more…)

  • Vox Is Unreliable Partner for Spanish Right

    Santiago Abascal
    Spanish Vox party leader Santiago Abascal gives a speech in Valencia, February 22, 2018 (Vox España)

    Spain’s far-right Vox (Voice) is turning out to be an unreliable partner for the mainstream parties of the right.

    • In Andalusia, where Vox won legislative seats for the first time in December, the party agreed to support a minority government of the conservative People’s Party and liberal Citizens but then made additional demands, including money for a program about Spanish colonialism and cuts to a fund that provides redress to victims of the Franco dictatorship as well as to groups that help immigrants.
    • In the Madrid regional assembly, Vox has reneged on its support for the People’s Party’s Isabel Díaz Ayuso and is demanding additional concessions to bring the center-right to power.
    • In Murcia, Vox is refusing to support a center-right government unless the party is involved in drafting its policies.

    At least they’re up front about it in Murcia. It’s not unreasonable for Vox to demand something in return for its support. Except that every time it gets what it wants, it asks for something more.

    The People’s Party and Citizens have themselves to blame. They shifted to the right in an attempt to outflank Vox and ruled out deals with the center-left. That has given Vox, with less than 10 percent support nationally, disproportionate power. It knows the mainstream parties have no alternative. (more…)

  • European Elections Are About More Than the Far Right

    European Parliament Strasbourg
    Three young women listen to a debate in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, September 14, 2016 (European Parliament)

    European elections kick off in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom on Thursday with most of the other 26 member states voting on Sunday.

    The temptation is to force a single narrative on the elections. American and British media in particular are obsessed with the performance of the Euroskeptic right. But it is only part of the story.

    The elections span a continent of 500 million people. Turnout in European elections is usually low, but those who do vote tend to do so on the basis of national, not European, issues. Hence the elections are less a referendum on the EU than a test for incumbent leaders and governments.

    To pro-versus-anti-EU narrative also simplifies reality. (more…)