Democracy in Europe is facing a storm - and it is not clear whether it will survive it
The multitude of elections held so far this year in European countries have one common denominator: the strengthening of the extreme right.
It seems that after only 80 years, the self-evident collective rejection on the continent of the values of the extreme right, which led it to the 2nd Military Academy, is no longer so clear or collective
Tali Goldstein
30/09/2022
Friday, September 30, 2022, 3:35 p.m. Updated: Saturday, October 01, 2022, 1:22 p.m.
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On September 1, the President of the United States, Joe Biden, in a scathing speech, warned Americans against authoritarian Republicans.
Both liberals and conservatives have criticized Biden for being "divisive."
His speech came too late: the global threats to democracy had already spread and penetrated too deeply.
The extremism of the Republican Party in the United States is part of a widespread phenomenon that should worry supporters of freedom and human rights around the world: many extreme right-wing parties have grown stronger in recent years and occupy a place of honor in the various parliaments - and sometimes even the government, after decades in which they were considered outcasts from the political arena, due to the traumatic lessons of World War II.
In just the first seven months of 2022, elections were held in several central European countries.
France, Spain, Germany, Sweden and Italy have gone through political upheavals in recent years, culminating this year in historical changes not seen for many decades - and they all have one common denominator: the rise of the extreme right and the growing normalization of right-wing values.
These changes are taking place at a particularly dangerous time in Europe, which is recovering from the corona epidemic: a war between Russia and Ukraine that has not been seen since World War II, combined with rising inflation and an energy crisis that is deepening as winter approaches.
The percentage of right-wing seats in European parliaments (photo: Walla! system, Walla system)
The latest example of a fringe far-right party that dramatically strengthened to the point of reaching power is the "Brothers of Italy" headed by Giorgio Maloney, who is known as the "spiritual successor of Mussolini".
In this month's elections, the party won more than 20% of the vote, and Meloni is expected to serve not only as Italy's first female prime minister, but also as the first far-right prime minister since Benito Mussolini.
Its right-wing coalition includes Silvio Berlusconi, a former prime minister and longtime friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Mateo Salvini, who admires the Russian demagogue and opposes immigration and major EU involvement in state affairs.
The strengthening of the right did not happen overnight.
The Italian people, who followed Mussolini and his fascism in the interwar period, did indeed turn their backs on the leader and his policies after World War II, but a small post-fascist movement remained active all the time, planning its return to power for more than seventy years.
The moment came earlier this year, when Italy found itself facing unprepared early elections, following the collapse of Prime Minister Mario Draghi's coalition due to internal sabotage.
Draghi, the former president of the European Central Bank who was appointed prime minister a year and a half earlier to lead Italy's recovery from the Corona crisis, was seen as a stabilizing and stable figure, loved and respected around the world - and was even called "Super Mario".
However, he too was unable to prevent the disintegration of his unity government when Berlusconi's center-right Forza Italia party and two larger parties, Salvini's right-wing Lega and former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte's populist Five Star Movement the process of disbanding the coalition.
In the decades after World War II, Italy experienced a deep social and economic deterioration, which included a deterioration in public investment, quality of life and business competitiveness.
The three right-wing parties place the blame for the precarious internal situation mainly on immigration and submission to the European Union.
In addition, an old-new player returned to the arena, which after the Second World War underwent a fundamental change that was not adopted by everyone - the idea of the "national interest".
In the two years that Draghi served as prime minister, he continued to promote the position that Italy's leaders should protect the country's national interest by making friends with countries with similar values that can help Italy when needed, for example, Germany and France.
This is a significant change compared to the idea that spread in the 1930s, according to which Italy acts as an independent country in the international arena.
Pro-European and trans-Atlantic policies have dominated Italian politics for years, and outside forces have tried to shape its national interest as they see fit.
The right-wing coalition in Italy (Photo: GettyImages)
The reason for the dramatic change was the fact that before World War II, the idea of the national interest was devoutly linked to the fascist view of the nation, of the Roman Empire, and of hegemony imposed by force.
The strengthening of the right in Italy was partly also due to the desire to return to the idea of the national interest which focuses on the nation state.
The return of the term national interest to the political lexicon in its traditional interpretation, and its use without shame or fear of bringing up dark echoes from the past, demonstrates well how the right has become part of the mainstream again.
Raphaela Danziger, professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, believes that although it is tempting to define this change as sudden and radical, "it is not a change at all, but a continuation of a trend."
According to her, in Italy, for example, extreme right-wing views have become normal in recent years.
Moreover, the lowest voting percentages recorded in the recent elections in the various European countries, compared to past elections, help the right to grow even stronger.
"It's a failure of the left," she told CNN.
Benito Mussolini (Photo: GettyImages)
The historic victory of the right in Italy came after a similar, and no less historic, victory of an extreme right-wing party with neo-Nazi roots in Sweden, known for its liberalism and equality.
The "Swedish Democrats" party, which became the second largest in Sweden in the general elections earlier this month, ousted the center-left coalition from power after about a hundred years - and for the first time allowed the entry of the extreme right into the new government.
Sweden is indeed seen in the world as a liberal and progressive country, and many ideas that are adopted over time in Europe, such as gender equality or LGBT rights, came from it. However, in recent years the Scandinavian country has faced issues of immigration, law and order and unprecedented crime. These factors led to the rise of the right of the extremist and of the "Swedish Democrats" party, whose roots lie in white nationalism and fascism.
"Immigration is the only reason the Sweden Democrats exist in the first place, they are against immigration and that is their platform," Pontus Odelman, a politics lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, told the "Euro News" website last month.
"The party was actually born from the neo-Nazi movement of the 1980s, and since then has tried to become part of the mainstream and talk less about blood and heritage and more about the incompetence of other races."
The losing Prime Minister of Sweden from the left camp, Magdalena Andersson (Photo: Reuters)
The last government in Sweden, led by the left-wing Social Democrats led by Magdalena Andersson (the first woman to hold the position), received the public's trust.
Voters claimed before the election that they trusted Anderson more than any other party leader, especially after she supported Sweden joining NATO in light of the war in Ukraine and the growing threat of Putin.
However, Anderson's personal popularity ultimately did not have a significant impact on her party's performance in the polls. This month's elections, Anderson conceded defeat to the right-wing bloc and announced her resignation after the center-left bloc won only 173 seats, out of the 349 seats in parliament.
Leader of the right-wing moderate party Olaf Kristensen (Photo: Reuters)
Also in France, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right "National Front" party, got stronger in preparation for the elections held in April - and she was the one who got to advance to the second round and go head-to-head with President Emmanuel Macron.
In the end, Le Pen lost to Macron and not by a huge margin - another example of the expanding trend of the right-wing strengthening in Europe and turning it into "Bon Ton" again.
But the strengthening of Le Pen also did not happen in the five years from the elections in 2017 to the elections held this year (her party received more than 41% of the votes in the second round, a figure much higher than in the previous elections in 2017).
Le Pen has been a significant player in French politics since the beginning of the 21st century, and her position advocates a liberal economy but not a liberal culture.
It prioritizes security and traditional values over individual and civil liberties.
And like the leaders of the right-wing parties in Italy, Le Pen also maintains a friendly relationship with Putin.
Macron, however, accused her in a heated confrontation before the election, of being under Putin's influence due to a loan that a Russian bank gave to her party years ago.
Macron also accused Le Pen of harboring a strong desire to take France out of the European Union.
Le Pen responded with the populist statement that she would dangle money back into the pockets of millions of French voters, in a year when voters' attention is mainly given to the cost of living and inflation.
An important actress since the beginning of the 21st century.
Marine Le Pen (Photo: Reuters, REUTERS/Yves Herman)
What made the situation even more complicated for Macron was the fact that Le Pen managed to soften her image in the run-up to the elections, abandoning the issues of immigration and Euroscepticism in favor of the cost of living - and benefited from the votes of far-right voters who shied away from the candidate Eric Zamor, who was perceived as too extreme, and gave their votes to Le Pen instead.
In her speech, Le Pen portrayed herself as a unifying figure who would heal a divided France and stop the "chaos" she says has been caused by Macron, a former banker who she claims represents the "power of money" and works for the few.
Politics in France also witnessed this time a fundamental change in tradition, similar to changes in other countries in the European Union.
Over the years, in local, regional and general elections, right and left voters have historically united to prevent the extreme right from coming to power, a phenomenon known as the "Republican Front".
This facade apparently fell apart in the 21st century.
"Among the politicians, the Republican front is coming into action, but it remains to be seen if the voters will follow suit," said Mathieu Gallard, director of the polling institute Ipsos France, ahead of the elections.
However, although the mainstream candidates, including the Conservative Party and the Socialist Party supported Macron in the second round, their voters did not follow suit.
in danger.
French President Emmanuel Macron (Photo: Reuters)
In 2017, the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party won seats in the German parliament for the first time, received more than 12% of the vote in the federal election and became the third largest party in the country.
"Something is definitely happening. From France and Italy to Sweden, it seems that rejection of the pan-European policy is getting stronger among our citizens," Gunner Beck, a party member, told CNN.
Since then, the party has been placed under official supervision by the authorities due to "suspicion of an attempted subversion of Germany's democratic constitution".
It is the first party to be placed under the supervision of the German government since the Nazi era.
The Central Council of Jews in Germany welcomed the move and said that "the destructive politics of the party undermines the democratic institutions and damages the credibility of democracy in the eyes of the citizens."
Leaders of the "Alternative for Germany" party after the 2017 elections in Germany (Photo: Reuters)
And in February of this year, the far-right party in Spain, "Wax" led by Santiago Abascal, managed to be elected this year for the first time ever to a regional government, thanks to an agreement with the conservative party "People's Party".
The two parties now jointly rule the region of Castile and León.
Vox also became the third most popular party in Spain in February's elections, despite controversial policies on immigration, sectarianism, violence and diversity.
The Spaniards have suffered from political instability in recent years.
In 2019, two elections were held after months of coalition talks failed to lead to the formation of a government.
This was the fourth election in Spain in four years.
The two election campaigns in 2019 were held after a corruption case that led to the overthrow of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy from the conservative party.
In addition, the separatists in Catalonia increased their power during this period, which led to an acute political crisis surrounding the referendum on secession from Spain in October 2017.
The repeated elections led to the strengthening of the extreme right in Spain.
And while in most of Europe the extreme right focuses on the issue of immigration, in Spain, the events in Catalonia helped "Vox", a party that expresses nostalgia for the Franco regime, to grow.
Vox, which was only founded in 2013, received about 15% of the votes and 52 seats in the parliament in 2019 - and became the third largest party in Spain and recorded a historic achievement: it was the first time that a far-right party had representation in the Spanish parliament since the end of Franco's dictatorship .
The leader of the far-right Vox party, Santiago Abascal.
Spain (Photo: Reuters)
"We are now in a regressive phase in European democracy," wrote the Spanish philosopher Joseph Ramonda in the Spanish newspaper "El Pais" when he described the support for "Vox" in February.
Indeed, it seems that the strengthening of the extreme right in Europe in the last decade mainly expresses the complacency that pervades the continent and the institutions that aim to preserve democracy.
For decades after the horrors of Nazism and fascism, European politicians from the right and the left made sure to push the far right back into the margins whenever it tried to raise its head.
They realized that this hateful ideology is fundamentally different from the basic values of democracy.
One example of efforts to preserve democracy on the continent is the European People's Party, which holds conservative and liberal positions, but at the same time supports the expansion of the European Union and the deepening of integration between its members.
This party is one of the oldest European parties in the European Union and has extensive influence,
Various leaders in Europe, including former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have worked hard over the years to isolate the party from extreme right-wing elements.
And in Sweden, for example, until 2018 the conservative "moderate party" refused to cooperate with the "Democratic Swedes", a party whose roots lie in Nazi ideology.
But the self-evident collective rejection throughout Europe of the values of the extreme right, which led the continent and the world to World War II, is no longer so self-evident today.
World War II is over, but the dangers still exist today (Photo: Giphy)
Pietro Castelli Gattinare, professor of political communication at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, told the "Vox" website that the extreme right is a global movement and a global ideology.
Their common feature is often a rejection of immigration.
"New ideas that come from outside are considered to endanger the nation-state, especially when it comes to civil rights, and especially gender equality," he said.
According to him, the positions shared by far-right politicians in Europe are opposition to liberal democracy and a preference for a more populist or authoritarian democracy;
The emphasis on Christianity and the importance of Christian nationalism, as well as the importance of the traditional family;
and the campaign against everything called "the lobby of the LGBT community".
enjoys close relations with the extreme right-wing parties in Europe.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (Photo: Reuters)
The momentum of the European right began to strengthen after the financial crisis in 2008.
Now another cost of living crisis is undermining European governments and institutions.
The war in Ukraine worsened the situation, but ambitious climate legislation and the monetary policy of the European Central Bank contributed to the strengthening of inflation even before that.
The erosion of living standards causes citizens to feel discontent with their governments and the political establishment.
In addition, a crisis always creates opportunities for parties that are in opposition, regardless of their ideology.
But the politics of fear, which is based and relies on the crisis, is usually what the right and extreme right tend to adopt.
"Many studies show that right-wing voters have a greater need for certainty and stability. When our society changes, conservatives psychologically interpret this as a threat. Therefore, it is much easier to unite these people against changes that are happening in reality or against more general threats such as the energy crisis, inflation, food shortages or immigration," Alice Stollmeier, executive director of Defense Democracy, told CNN this week.
Such threats abound today. "Rising food and gas prices, falling trust in democratic institutions, widening inequality, difficulty in class mobility, and concerns about immigrants have created a sense of Desperation that unscrupulous leaders can easily take advantage of," said Nick Cheeseman, a professor of democracy at the University of Birmingham in England, to CNN. According to him, the combination of crises today is "the perfect storm facing liberal democracy - and countries that support inclusion, responsible governance and human rights will be forced to to try much harder to survive it."
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