The Rise of the European Right

There is hope for Europe yet, though the Right did receive a temporary setback in the elections in Spain on Sunday with the unexpectedly good showing of the Left-wing Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE).

From The European Conservative

By Dieter Stein

In Europe, populists were permanently marginalised—or so it was claimed by hostile observers. However, since pandemic policies ended, unresolved problems have returned to the forefront of political debate, giving a boost to right-wing populist parties everywhere.

It’s national conservative springtime in Europe— much to the chagrin of the Left and the Brussels establishment. From north to south, east to west, the wind is blowing in a right-wing direction. Let’s go on a quick political tour d’horizon.

In Italy, Giorgia Meloni has established herself as an intelligent, hard-nosed leader. Her right-wing coalition is proving much more stable, focused, and fiscally responsible than many expected. Recent regional and local elections in Spain have handed the conservative Partido Popular (PP) huge gains and forced the humiliated socialist Prime Minister Sanchez to call a snap poll for July. The most likely outcome will be a PP victory, but they will probably need to form a coalition with Santiago Abascal’s right-wing VOX party, which has increasingly become socially accepted. One desperate socialist observer called the regional votes a “conservative avalanche.”

A bit further north, France’s Marie Le Pen currently leads in polls over President Macron, who seems increasingly aloof from his people’s concerns. Scandinavia is also moving to the right. The Sweden Democrats have broken the previous cordon sanitaire around them after removing some more extreme elements. They are now the second-largest party in the Riksdag and are indirectly part of the government in Stockholm. Finland has also taken a turn to the right. Voters ousted the progressive, ‘woke’ government of Sanna Marin in the elections in April’s election. European media darling Marin is about to be replaced by a conservative successor, who will govern in a coalition with the right-wing Finns Party, which came second in the election.

In Austria, the Freedom Party (FPÖ) currently ranks first in the polls, and they have entered a third regional coalition government with the centre-right Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP). One can smell the cold sweat of the Left in Vienna at the prospect of FPÖ boss Herbert Kickl having a realistic chance of becoming the next Austrian chancellor. Kickl is a political ally of Viktor Orbán in neighbouring Hungary, who resists all efforts from Brussels to corner him.

The London Times’ triumphant declaration in a headline last year that “Populism has been a victim of the COVID pandemic” now appears to have been premature and ill-judged. Sure, on the global level, the pandemic dethroned some big beasts on the populist Right, like Trump in the U.S. and Bolsonaro in Brazil. Donald Trump was derided as an unhinged clown raging about the rigged elections; U.S. Republicans looked divided and weakened after he left office.

In Europe, populists were permanently marginalised—or so it was claimed by hostile observers. However, quite to the contrary, since pandemic policies ended, unresolved problems have returned to the forefront of political debate, giving a boost to right-wing populist parties everywhere. First and foremost, the resurgence of migration pressures: record high immigration numbers add to existing housing shortages and stoke cultural tensions. Additionally, Russia’s war in Ukraine and energy price spikes have fuelled inflation and depressed living standards, putting financial resources in many countries under severe strain.

The ‘woke’ agenda of the Left, with all their culture wars, attacks on the traditional family, and bizarre (trans-)gender and identity politics, have provoked a backlash among ordinary men and women (not only ‘old white men’) who won’t tolerate any more lecturing, patronising, or re-educating. At last, the arrogant, Left-liberal, ‘green’ establishment in politics and the media, who want to force their ‘great transformations’ on European societies, are being challenged by a populist opposition supported by long-neglected social undercurrents. And increasingly, these defiant political forces have understood the need to connect and network internationally.

We are witnessing the emergence of a ‘Conservative International.’ This was evident when I visited the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gathering in Budapest in May. More than 600 conservatives from Europe and North America met and discussed pressing issues, seeking common ground and understanding. There certainly seemed to be a broad consensus regarding the opposition to both mass migration and the aggressive promotion of gender ideology.

Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán opened the event with the slogan: “No migration, no gender, no war.” However, what exactly he meant by “no war” was left in doubt. Conspicuously, he evaded a more detailed explanation of how he would stop the war in Ukraine. This was presumably because his stance on Russia and its aggression is currently the most divisive issue among conservative and right-wing movements in Europe and beyond.

This question has also almost broken the former Visegrád Group alliance. On one side, the Polish ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party urges for the most substantial possible military support for embattled Ukraine; on the other side, you have Orbán’s ambivalent stance towards Putin’s regime. So Orbán probably thought it better to leave this contentious issue out of CPAC Hungary entirely.

Based on an annual political conference founded by U.S. Republicans in the 1970s, the second CPAC Hungary event was successful, but it also underscored the organisational weaknesses of European right-wing parties, which cannot set up a similar supra-national convention without assistance from the other side of the Atlantic. The National Conservatism conference in London two weeks later, for example, was also an export from the U.S., initiated by the Edmund Burke Foundation.

In Europe, parties emphasising the nation-state face particular challenges in coalescing and finding common ground. They also lack common symbols. This was evident in Budapest. In the futuristic convention centre on the shores of the Danube, you could see U.S.-inspired stars-and-stripes banners—but no European flags.

Progressive media were alarmed at a ‘national conservative international’ gathering in Budapest. For them, Hungary is the epicentre of ‘illiberal’ resistance against the ‘woke’ transformation of traditional societies. Indeed, Orbán is the only leading politician from the European Christian Democratic family of parties who calls out the Left for the wars they wage on our culture. He does not shy away from attacking the enemy.

The common denominator at CPAC in Budapest and at the National Conservatism conference in London was a commitment to strong nation-states and against the shadowy globalist ‘woke capitalism’ of big corporations hijacked by left-liberal cultural forces. “We are under attack,” the Hungarian prime minister declared in Budapest. Western societies are attacked by a “woke ideological virus,” which he said had been developed in “liberal-progressive laboratories” to target our Achilles’ heel: the nation.

It seems unthinkable that such a conference could ever be held, for example, in Berlin. Despite much talk of ‘tolerance’ and ‘diversity’ in the German capital, there is relentless persecution and repression of non-conforming opposition movements on the Right in Germany. This is not only done by violent Antifa thugs—who put pressure on landlords not to rent out venues for conservative events, so much so that Germany’s right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party has struggled to find suitable spaces in hotels or halls for conventions in Berlin. A red-green-dominated media also brazenly smears any attempt by mainstream conservatives at meeting up with other right-wing—yet democratically-elected—politicians.

For a long time, a political void existed on the Right in Germany. Even though this was filled by the AfD following the leftward shift of Merkel’s Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU), the German establishment still finds it impossible to accept that a new opposition party has emerged. Incidentally, despite all the demonisation, AfD ranks third in current polls, ahead of the Greens, who have been rocked by a nepotism scandal and accusation of sleaze in the economics and climate ministry. Notwithstanding this, the dominance of progressive forces in universities, the media, and especially the public broadcasters is overwhelming, even hegemonic. Berlin is the epicentre of ‘woke’ progressivism in Germany.

In this respect, Germany is rightly identified by conservatives from other countries as the central problem of European politics. Brussels’ lecturing and bossing around of conservative governments in Central and Eastern Europe are justly seen as an echo of the famous German hyper-moralism, always keen to teach others a lesson—now in the modern ‘eco-woke’ fashion.

On the key issue of mass migration, Berlin has, for a long time, destabilised the continent by not acting decisively and preventing an effective system of border checks. Germany is still the magnet for immigration into the welfare system. The rest of Europe, especially the southern and eastern countries, was left to do the dirty work of checking the flow of migration at the outer borders—while being called racist for doing so.

Germany’s inability to discern her own national interest is deeply irritating to the rest of Europe. On issues like mass migration and energy policy, Germany is behaving like a wrong-way driver. The stubborn insistence on shutting down the last nuclear power stations during an energy crisis this past winter baffled international observers. Berlin appears to be Europe’s ghost driver, presuming to instruct others how to proceed. It is little wonder that many right-wing parties have coalesced into anti-German alliances, especially during the Euro crisis. And yet, what is needed is a dialogue of patriotic parties, which includes the German Right.

Eric Zemmour and Marion Marechal greet an audience of more than 8,000 people at the Zenith of Toulon in 2022. Photo by Laurent Coust / SOPA Images via Getty Images.

The coming elections for the European Parliament, a year from this June, offer a massive opportunity for the European Right to demonstrate that they are a force to be reckoned with. Currently, there are two major competing right-wing groupings in the parliament: the national-conservative European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group and the more hard- line Identity and Democracy (ID) group, plus a dozen non-affiliated Fidesz members of the European Parliament. If all the parties that now form those two factions would combine, an allied Right would easily secure between 140 and 150 seats in Brussels, winning the second rank, closely behind the European People’s Party (EPP) and far ahead of the struggling Socialists and Democrats group in third place. A united faction would be a ‘broad church’ of different currents on the Right.

However, this is unlikely to happen. There are too many differences of opinion on the euro and European Central Bank policies, on fiscal transfers and subsidies, and—most notably at the moment—on Russia. Personal and long-standing national animosities and rivalries also stand in the way. Warsaw even came up with totally unrealistic claims for reparations from World War II. So far, the inability to find common ground and compromise has prevented the formation of a united, large, right-wing faction in that could effectively counter the leftists, pseudo-liberals, and centrists in the Brussels establishment.

Divisions among the Right mean that the Left prevails. What is needed is more dialogue, more listening, more learning from each other—and more mutual appreciation of distinct national sensibilities and approaches. Let’s suppose right-wing movements truly want to live up to their historical responsibility—to defend Western civilisation, national identities, and Europe’s sovereign nation-states—in an increasingly dangerous, multipolar world. In that case, it’s time to overcome the petty internal feuds. Closer cooperation within the European Right could really make a difference.