NEW RECORDS FOR THE FAR-RIGHT IN EUROPE, MORE BAD NEWS FOR MUSLIMS?

By Dr Alain Gabon 

In this issue

Renewed interest
A continent in crisis
Main winners
Who are the main losers?
No groundswell
The real threat: influence

Issue 01, Vol 4, July 2024, The Cordoba foundation

The real threat of the far-right may not be its electoral victories but its mainstreaming and ability to co-opt other parties.

On 9 June, nearly 380 million citizens from the 27 EU nations elected their MPs in what was the largest democratic election in the West and one of the largest in the world.

Renewed interest

As is customary for European elections, by far the largest group, at 49%, nearly half of all eligible voters, was once again the abstentionists. It is nonetheless noteworthy that since the 2019 election, the decrease in voter turnout, which had been steady since the first 1979 election, has stopped, and the 51% participation was the highest in thirty years since 1994. The long downward trend thus seems to have been inverted.

If Europhobia has recently receded, few continue to advocate Frexits or Greeksits, and even France’s Marine le Pen and Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have abandoned the idea, it is not because the enthusiasm for the Union has increased but because people have come to understand they may be worse off without it in a strictly national framework. Moreover, their nations no longer have the strengths and resources to address any of the main challenges that confront them, such as the environmental crisis or global pandemics.

Brexit has also given a cold shower to many who may have been tempted to follow that example.

With indifference, the main attitude is therefore no longer outright rejection of the EU but pragmatic, sometimes fatalistic acceptance without enthusiasm.

A continent in crisis

Thematically, this election was dominated by economic bread-and-butter issues, especially the cost-of-living, the combination of low incomes with high inflation and the subsequent dramatic impoverishment of large segments of the popular classes; immigration, the environment, national and European defence, and the Ukraine war, now increasingly presented and defined by media and politicians as a genuine European war and even a resurgence of the Cold War.

Those issues have much in common. They are all lived as both national and trans-European crises and even civilisational existential threats. Each of them has generated a moral panic, often largely unjustified especially regarding immigration, security, terrorism, and the threat posed by Russia to countries other than Ukraine, where threat inflation prevails. They have contributed to creating a siege mentality across Europe. And none has found a solution, not even close, especially on the environment, the economy, and the war in Ukraine.

Far from the European utopia of the first postwar decades,  a sense of crisis and decline, of doom-and-gloom, of losing control over one’s nation and future has settled among very large segments of the Euro populations, especially in countries like France, and was often reflected in the electoral debates.

This pessimistic, often catastrophist dystopian mood and discourse on the “decline” of a Europe surrounded by enemies and besieged on all fronts by immigration, terrorism, “Islamism”, the economic competition of the US, China, or other bogeymen, coupled with a new sense of internal military threat due to a Russian invasion lived as a traumatic “return of war on the European continent”, has strongly favoured the far-right parties who were able to capitalise on that sense of crises and fear.

Main winners

Much has been said about the triumph of the far-right “national-populist” parties especially the spectacular victories of France’s National Rally (former National Front) with its flamboyant telegenic new leader Jordan “The-Ideal-Son-in-Law” Bardella, who at 31% inflicted a truly humiliating defeat to President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance coalition (15%), before being defeated at the July national legislative election.

Italy’s PM, Giorgia Meloni, strongly consolidated her position both at home and at the European Parliament where she may now be in the pivotal position of King (and Queen) maker.

Germany’s AfD, a party more extreme than France’s National Rally, came second and at 16% defeated the Social-Democrats of Chancellor Olaf Scholz (14%).

At nearly 45%, Hungary’s Victor Orban’s Fidesz Coalition continued to pulverize his opponents, winning far ahead of the second largest party (30%), while far-right national-populist parties made significant gains in several other countries like Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Austria, where the Freedom Party won its first nationwide ballot at 25% of the vote.

Who are the main losers?

The major losers included French President Macron and his liberal Renew Europe, which lost 23 seats; German Chancellor Scholz and his Social Democrats; and, most sadly yet barely emphasised by most commentaries, the Greens, who either collapsed or performed poorly in major countries including France, Germany, Italy (the two founding members of the EU and its three largest economies), and Austria.

There is no doubt the environment now, and in the future, must be counted among the major casualties, possibly the main one of those elections. Especially since the winning parties are themselves, at best, “climate-sceptics”, deliberately passive, indifferent, and silent in front of the worsening environmental destruction, when they are not outright hostile to the ecological transition, which they have successfully renamed “punitive ecology” – turning green policies into another perfect scapegoat, with immigration.

No groundswell

The commentaries on the election results were largely dominated by the successes of the far-right. Yet, their European victories, real as they are, may have been overestimated by a strong focus on France-Germany-Italy, which produced an inaccurate and misleading picture.

First, as alarming as it is, the rise in Europe of the radical hard right is nothing new. Those ideological families have been steadily emerging since the 1980s, with their most spectacular advances in the last 20 years.

Second, their gains were  concentrated in mostly a handful of countries especially France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Hungary, masking the variety of national situations and results including the successes of the left and the defeats or losses, sometimes drastic, of the far-right in countries like Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Poland.

These countries show there is nothing inevitable about the electoral victories of the far-right, and the recent success of the New Popular Front leftist coalition in the French national election may be taken as yet another example.

Third, the far-right deep blue wave continues to advance but it is in no way a groundswell. A comparative look at the 2019 and 2024 Parliaments shows its total gains are actually quite modest: 118 seats total in 2019, 131 now, only 13 more. Furthermore, in a Parliament with 15 more seats (720) than in 2019 (705). By percentage, the far-right merely increased from 16.74% to 18.19%, and thus still represents a small minority.

The other major winner is actually the existing dominant coalition especially the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, which remains the largest force and comforts its domination over the Parliament thanks to its strong and already old alliance with the Social Democrats of the S&D, itself the second largest group, and Renew.

Far from being taken over by a “brown wave”, the European Parliament thus remains stable, with the same majority coalition. At 403 seats out of 720, 56% of the total, this tri-partite coalition keeps its comfortable majority, and the two far-right groups are not a part of it. Contrary to the fears expressed by some, the reconducted majority coalition should not have to form a new coalition or count on the vote of the far-right to pass policies.

Fourth, despite recent high-profile efforts at coordination and strong commonalities, a nativist brand of ultra-nationalism, a penchant for authoritarianism and “strong” leaders, opposition to non-Western immigration, and traditional conservative family Christian values – its many parties, far from forming cohesive groups, are  divided on major policy issues. These include the economy, European integration, Russia, and more. Not to mention quarrels between egos as illustrated by the detestable relations between Marine le Pen and Giorgia Meloni.

It is unlikely that the two far-right umbrella groups, the European Conservatives & Reformists and Identity & Democracy will even be willing to merge in order to constitute a genuinely strong formation, which for them would be a historic opportunity.

The real threat: influence

The data clearly shows that the far-right is in no position to take over the Parliament. Yet the gravity of the situation for ethnic minorities, Europe’s relationship with the Global South, Muslims, and the already embattled status of Islam in Europe should not be minimised.

Because xenophobia, virulent Islamophobia, and hostility to both immigration from the Global South and the presence of non-Western people as full citizens of Europe are part of the DNA of most of those parties, the situation is now bound to become even worse for those minorities, whether foreign or citizens.

Because the ideologies those parties and leaders  are propagating are profoundly undemocratic, inegalitarian, authoritarian, essentialist, exclusive, and rooted in fantasies of racial-civilizational superiority and white-Christian ethno-states, European societies may become even more hostile, less inclusive, and less accepting of diversity. Especially the Muslim kind.

On the one hand, the threats remain situated mostly at the national level more than in the EU Parliament.

The far-right is already in power in several European countries, and Macron’s shocking dissolution of France National Assembly and the subsequent snap legislative elections of 30th June and 7th July — the real surprise, which has provoked a cascade of spectacular plot twists and rapid transformations of the whole political landscape of France, could have opened the door of both legislative and executive power to Marine le Pen and Jordan Bardella.

That threat was avoided thanks to the overnight recreation of the famous French barrage or Front Républicain (Republican dam or front) by which both parties and voters mobilise to prevent a victory of the far-right even at the cost of voting for a candidate they hate, in the logic of the lesser of two evils.

Yet, the possibility of having, for the first time since the Collaboration and the 1940’s Vichy Regime, a far-right government in France too with Jordan Bardella as the new Prime Minister was a clear and present danger. Besides, the far-right is already remobilising in view of the 2027 presidential election, which Marine le Pen hopes will be her moment.

On the other hand, as the past 20 years have made clear, the real threat is not so much whether the far-right reaches power but its spectacular capacity to influence the other parties by setting the agenda, the priorities, the terms of the debates, and the policies, whoever will pass them.

This is where the real power of the far-right has so far resided: in its ability to win not so much elections, but in Gramscian terms, the battle of ideas and of ideologies to establish a cultural hegemony. Then the rest, including the actual policies, automatically follow, whichever government passes them.

In that respect, its successes have been nothing less than spectacular, especially on immigration, security, law and order, Islam, and increasingly on issues like the environmental transition. All of those and more are now widely seen and understood, or rather misunderstood, by both the ruling elites, the mainstream media, and the majority public opinions through the ideological angles and discursive prisms of the far-right.

The successful establishment of this cultural hegemony, relative as it may be, has led on the one hand to the normalisation and mainstreaming of extremist right-wing parties, ideas, and debates that not so long ago were both marginal and taboo. On the other hand, to the radicalisation of what used to be centrist parties, especially the centre-right, which are moving further and further to the right to the point of often being indistinguishable from the far-right. This is a  phenomenon highly visible in France with the conservative party, Les Républicains, whose differences with the far-right cannot often be seen.

As a result of this mainstreaming, those parties no longer need to win elections for the gravity centre of political life, majority public opinion, and dominant culture to shift dramatically to the far-right, as has been steadily happening these past few decades, especially on Islam and Muslims. This has happened in the most complete manner to the US Republican Party, which used to be centrist and is now an extreme right-wing party on all issues.

In France, a superb example that this process has been under way in Europe too, the Islamophobic laws of the past several decades — the multiple bans on Islamic outfits, the August 2021 law “against Islamist separatism”, the “Islamic Charter”, and the whole edifice of the “Systematic Obstruction Policy”— were not passed by the far right but by the left and centre-right, including the Socialists, the Gaullist RPR of former President Jacques Chirac, and Macron’s own government.

At the EU level, the risk is that racist and Islamophobic far-right policies will simply be implemented by the still dominant EPP coalition as has already become visible with the Migration Pact and asylum seekers.

In their misguided attempts to pre-empt the far-right by emulating it in the hope of attracting its voters, the mainstream political forces are being co-opted by the right-wing parties.