The Threatening Advance of the Right

Marcello Musto

The harmful uniformity of approach to political and economic questions have helped to produce a second major change (after that of 1989) in the European political context. In the last few years, a profound aversion has developed everywhere on the old continent towards anything that can be described as ‘politics’; this has become synonymous with power for its own sake, rather than a commitment to, and a collective interest in, social change, as it was mostly understood in the 1960s and 1970s. In a number of countries, the tide of anti-politics has also washed over the forces of the radical Left. Largely because of their poor performance in government, they are even blamed for adaptation to the existing climate and gradual abandonment of the militant demands that they used to champion.

There have been significant changes in the European balance of forces. Some bipartisan systems have simply imploded, as in post-dictatorship Spain and Greece. Similar trends have affected the political systems in France and Italy, where for decades the vote was divided between the centre-right and centre-left blocs.

The political-electoral landscape has been modified by abstentionism, the rise of new populist formations, the major advance of far-Right forces, and in some cases the consolidation of a Left alternative to neoliberal policies.

Participation in elections for the European Parliament has also fallen. This reflects loss of interest in an institution that represents an ever more technocratic, ever less political model for Europe. Riding the anti-EU wave, new ‘post-ideological’ movements have arisen in recent years, guided by the generic denunciation of the corrupt existing system.

In many European countries, xenophobic, nationalist, or openly neo-fascist parties have made big advances as the effects of the economic crisis have made themselves felt. In some cases, they have modified their political language, replacing the classical Left-Right division with a new struggle specific to contemporary society: what Marine Le Pen calls the conflict ‘between those at the top and those at the bottom’. In this new polarisation, far-Right candidates are supposed to represent the ‘people’ against the establishment (or the forces that have for a long time alternated in government) and against the elites who favour an all-powerful free market.

The ideological profile of these political movements has also changed. The racist component is often shifted to the background and economic issues brought to the fore. The blind, restrictive opposition to EU immigration policies is taken a stage further by playing on the war among the poor, even more than discrimination based on skin colour or religious affiliation. In a context of high unemployment and grave social conflict, xenophobia is raised through propaganda asserting that migrants take jobs from local workers and that the latter should have priority in employment, social services and welfare entitlements.

In both France and Italy, some historical fortresses of the working class and Communist vote have mutated into stable electoral bases of right-wing parties. The near-uniform advance of these parties, in regions where the organisations of the workers' movement had exercised undisputed hegemony for a very long time, may also be attributed to the fact that they have taken up battles and issues once dear to both social democrats and communists.

The Right has made its breakthroughs not only by means of classical reactionary instruments, such as campaigns against globalisation, but also through the arrival of new asylum-seekers and the specter of the ‘Islamisation’ of society. Above all, however, they have called for social policies traditionally associated with the Left, at a time when the Social Democrats were opting for public spending cuts and the radical Left was gagged because of its support for, or actual participation in, government. The rightist ‘welfare’ is of a different kind, however: no longer universal, inclusive and solidaristic, but based on a principle that has been described as ‘welfare nationalism’. In other words, it involves the offer of rights and services only to members of the already existing national community.

In addition to its widespread support in rural areas and the provinces, which are often depopulated and hit by high unemployment because of the economic crisis, the far Right has been able to draw on a significant number of workers who have yielded to the blackmail of ‘either immigration or the welfare state’.

One of the most alarming cases was Hungary. After the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) government had imposed severe austerity measures at the behest of the Troika, causing a lurch into deflation, the Hungarian Civic Union/Fidesz took over the reins of office. Then in 2012, having purged the judiciary and brought the mass media under control, the government introduced a new constitution with authoritarian overtones that took the country a perilously long way from the rule of law.

In recent years, therefore, the parties of the populist, nationalist, or neofascist Right have considerably broadened their support in almost every part of Europe. In many cases, they have proved capable of dominating political debate and have sometimes entered government in a coalition with the more moderate Right. It is a disturbing epidemic, to which it is certainly impossible to respond without fighting the virus that caused it in the first place: the neoliberal mantra still so fashionable in Brussels.

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 4, Jul 21 - 27, 2024