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rfmcdonald“Most of Europe’s populist parties are doing well in the polls, including the [Dutch] PVV,” says Sarah de Lange, associate professor of political science at the University of Amsterdam and an expert on Europe’s radical right. “The Moroccan incident didn’t affect their popularity very much.” Overall, in fact, populist parties are stronger in Europe now than they have been in decades.
That’s a worrying trend for the continent’s moderates. In late May, Europeans will head to the polls to vote for a new European Parliament. As it stands now, far-right nationalist groups, led by politicians like [the PVV's Geert] Wilders and Marine le Pen of France’s Front National party, are poised to make historic gains. Wilders has been busy over the past few months travelling around Europe, meeting with his populist counterparts and forging an alliance that now has the potential to make a significant impact on European politics. According to Pollwatch2014, a far-right bloc in the European Parliament could win around 38 seats from at least seven EU countries. A modest number in the 766-seat legislature, but enough to make it eligible for more than $3.7 million a year in public funding.
The irony is that Europeans will be funding a political movement in the European Parliament that wants to dismantle the EU. “What’s dangerous is that we’re seeing an increase in support for these parties throughout Europe, and that is affecting mainstream politics,” says de Lange. From Austria to France and the Netherlands, the radical right has gained momentum amidst frustration with the status quo. De Lange partly blames mainstream parties for failing to come up with novel approaches to a radically changed 21st-century environment. Mass migration, for instance, has altered the face of Europe but centrist parties have done little to address issues of European identity and integration that have come along with it.
The PVV and Front National, meanwhile, have openly embraced those issues, with a bullishness that appeals to an increasing number of Europeans who question the relevancy of the EU. The likes of Wilders have played to those sentiments, promising to “liberate Europe from the monster of Brussels.”
Euro-skepticism has been around since the birth of the EU. But in recent years, particularly in the aftermath of the 2009 financial crisis, it has become the cause-célèbre of the far right. The economic collapse of Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece has helped reactionary ideologies flourish, spawning neo-fascist groups like the Golden Dawn in Greece and Jobbik in Hungary, which managed more than 20 per cent of the popular vote in recent parliamentary elections. In Italy, Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of the fascist leader Benito Mussolini, was welcomed to the political stage.
Mainstream conservatives appear to have been taken off guard, unable to mount a coherent response to the popularity of the more extreme groups. In the U.K., the populist U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) has been outpolling the Tories and nipping at the heels of Labour. One in five Tory supporters now say they will vote UKIP.
"Why Europe's Far Right Is Getting Cozy With Russia") that the sympathy of many in the European far right for Russia--Russian annexations, Russian conservatism--is reciprocated by Russian support of said, even of funding of some parties.
With polls suggesting far-right parties could score big gains in European parliamentary elections on May 25, rightist leaders “want to highlight the dangers of EU overreach,” says Cas Mudde, an assistant professor at the University of Georgia’s School of Public & International Affairs. Le Pen, Wilders, and Farage all want their countries to leave the 28-nation bloc. The EU’s offer of emergency financial aid to Ukraine also makes an inviting target for the rightists, who routinely accuse Brussels of wasting taxpayers’ money.
Even as they attack the EU, some rightist leaders don’t seem keen to get too close to Russia. Wilders, for example, is strongly pro-U.S. and pro-Israel, putting him at odds with Kremlin policy. His comments on the Ukraine crisis “have nothing to do with Putin or with foreign policy,” Mudde says. Wilders views the situation as “a bailout,” in which European taxpayers are being asked to support a corrupt regime, he says.
UKIP’s Farage said he has respect for Putin, “compared with the kids who run foreign policy” in Britain. But, he added: “I don’t like him, I wouldn’t trust him, and I wouldn’t want to live in his country.”
Others, though, seem flattered at the treatment they’ve received in Moscow. Le Pen was snubbed by American politicians when she visited the U.S. in 2011. In Moscow, though, she had an audience with the speaker of the Duma, the lower house of parliament, telling him that she opposed sanctions and wanted to restore “traditional, friendly” relations with Russia.
Along with the National Front, rightist parties from Austria, Belgium, Hungary, and Italy sent observers for the Crimea referendum. (Some others, including UKIP and the Dutch Freedom Party, didn’t participate.)
The European rightist party that’s closest to Putin may be Hungary’s Jobbik. Its leader, Gabor Vona, made a high-profile visit to Moscow last year and declared that Russia considered Jobbik “a partner.” Mitchell A. Orenstein, a professor of political science at Northeastern University, writes in a recent Foreign Affairs article that the Kremlin may be subsidizing some smaller rightist European parties, such as Greece’s Golden Dawn.
Just as European rightists seek political advantage in the Ukraine crisis, Putin has his own reasons for cultivating them. “Russian support of the far right in Europe has less to do with ideology,” Orenstein writes, than with Putin’s desire “to destabilize European governments, prevent EU expansion, and help bring to power European governments that are friendly to Russia.”
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