Why the far-right in Europe will gain votes
Just like in the U.S., the far-right parties in Europe are gaining ground and are becoming more legitimate in the eyes of the voters. The established parties are trying to fend them off, but are not successful. Their best chance is still to create coalitions to exclude them, but it is only a matter of time before voters have had enough of this excluding strategy and they will instead turn further right.
Recent information related to the successful Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Germany’s far-right party, sheds light on the way Donald Trump’s strategy is being emulated by right-wing parties across Europe. The AfD, which came second in the federal elections with 20.6%, has been designated “extremist” by German intelligence agencies, and its policies declared incompatible with the free democratic order. As a result, the party is currently shut out of any potential right-wing coalition at a national level, through the adoption of a firewall policy by the center-right CDU-CSU. This policy by the center-right parties will most likely lead to lost votes in the future and is a risky strategy.
The AfD outlines the next stage of its plan for power. It wants to break down the firewall by polarizing public debate between itself and the woke left as personified in the Left Party and also in the Social Democratic Party. The goal is to create a situation in which the political divide no longer runs between the AfD and the other political currents, but rather one in which a bourgeois-conservative camp and a radicalizing left-wing camp face each other, comparable to the situation in the U.S. The moderate workers would in this model associate themselves closer to the conservative camp.
By forcing voters of the political center to take sides on the basis of values, and by stigmatizing the left in the same terms as Trump as radical left lunatics, the AfD wants to erode support for the firewall at a cultural and narrative level, to the point where the CDU-CSU can no longer justify it to their voters. This is a smart strategy, in particular if you add the element of no more immigration in the equation. Most voters in the U.S. have concluded that the immigration has to stop, a key factor in Trump’s victory, and similar to the message from the European far-right parties.
Combined with a shift of emphasis in its language, to present a more moderate face to the electorate, the AfD hopes this will finally end its isolation and open a pathway to power. This is exactly what Trump did by stigmatizing far-left anti-democratic forces like Antifa, Black Lives Matter, pro-Palestine and trans rights protesters and activists.
The situation in Gaza has likely help the more moderate and far-right parties too as the far-left radicals are supporting Hamas, a terrorist organization, responsible for killing more than 1,200 Jews. Even though Israel’s response has been harsh and somewhat questionable, most voters side with the democracy rather than supporting Arab terrorists. In this situation, the strategy adopted by progressives of the center-left has to change. What is driving people towards parties like the AfD is no longer simply economic hardship, or hostility to migrants, but a sense that the rule of law is breaking down.
In the UK, the situation is set to be exacerbated by the formation of a new left party, involving former Labour leader far-left Jeremy Corbyn, the dissident Labour MP Zarah Sultana and four independent Muslim MPs elected on religious conservative politics and fueled by anger over Gaza. This will help the far-right just like in Germany. In short, by mobilizing anti-Israel rhetoric from the streets into electoral politics, Corbyn looks set to fuel exactly the kind of polarizing atmosphere that the British far-right party Reform, currently polling up to 30%, can feed off. As Reform is moving to the center, the left is moving further left, thereby alienated moderate voters.
The left and center parties are trying to block the growing far-right parties by using coalitions, reduce funding, stopping free speech platforms, use lawfare and using the system to stop the parties. However, as was evident in the U.S., the voters have the final say and this is the case in Europe as well. The trend is clearly that the far-right parties are getting more accepted by the voters and that the voters are rejecting the far-left’s anti-democratic efforts and increasingly radical rhetoric.