The US election’s other loser: European populists

 

EUROPE AT LARGE

The US election’s other loser: European populists

 

Joe Biden’s victory robs Europe’s illiberals of a cheerleader in the White House.

 

BY PAUL TAYLOR

November 9, 2020 4:44 am

https://www.politico.eu/article/us-election-2020-other-loser-european-populists/

 

Paul Taylor, a contributing editor at POLITICO, writes the Europe At Large column.

 

PARIS — However narrow and contested, Joe Biden’s victory in the U.S. presidential election will have a salutary impact not just on transatlantic relations, but on Europe’s domestic politics.

 

Unlike Donald Trump, who spent four years using his ideological soulmates as a crowbar to weaken and divide the European Union, the next occupant of the White House will not be rolling out the red carpet for nationalist populists from across the Atlantic. He won’t reward those who defy Brussels on the rule of law and freedom of expression or actively encourage the breakup of the European Union.

 

Trump’s defeat — though less resounding than many Europeans had hoped — robs Europe’s illiberal demagogues of a cheerleader and ally in Washington. This is particularly bad news for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Poland’s de facto ruler Jarosław Kaczyński, who will no longer be able to play the “Trump card” to buttress their domestic political standing and withstand pressure from European institutions over their assault on judicial independence, media pluralism and civil rights.

 

Instead, a Democratic administration is likely to shun them as political pariahs, even as it continues to pursue close defense relations with Central Europe. Tellingly, Biden recently lumped the Polish and Hungarian governments together with Belarusian autocrat Alexander Lukashenko, saying: “You see what’s happening in everything from Belarus to Poland to Hungary and the rise of totalitarian regimes in the world. [Trump] embraces all the thugs in the world.”

 

If their illiberal nationalist mindset and their conservative provincial support base won’t change, Europe’s populist leaders are likely to find that, without Trump for moral support, they will have to act more pragmatically and less confrontationally toward Brussels and Berlin.

 

Those who nailed their colors most publicly to Trump’s mast, such as Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša, who rushed to hail the Republican incumbent’s “triumph” and denounce “delays and facts denying” while votes were still being counted, look most exposed.

 

But Western Europe’s mini-Trumps have lost an important international godfather, too. Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon played an important role in trying to build a pan-European alliance of far-right nationalist parties ahead of last year’s European Parliament election, and many were galvanized by the popularity of Trump’s brand of politics in some parts of the U.S.

 

They may still be able to count on Vladimir Putin for discreet funding, social media promotion and even a public embrace if Moscow deems it would help undermine the EU. Some have played that card before, too: Remember Italian hard-right Euroskeptic Matteo Salvini’s selfies with the Russian leader and French anti-immigration populist Marine Le Pen’s audience in the Kremlin during the 2017 French presidential campaign.

 

But when it comes to U.S. support, Europe’s Trump-wannabees will come up dry. Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage won’t get extra media exposure as a warm-up act at campaign rallies for Biden, as he did for Trump. Nor will Prime Minister Boris Johnson be able to use the defeated president’s endorsement of him as “Britain Trump” to endear himself in Washington.

 

Instead, a Biden administration will likely nudge the U.K. toward a closer relationship with the EU rather than goading it to walk away and encouraging others to follow, as Trump did.

 

U.S. ambassadors will no longer be undiplomatically threatening European companies that do business in Iran, as Richard Grenell did on Twitter within hours of taking up his post in Germany. Nor are they likely to host private events with the far right and potential donors, as Trump’s envoy in the Netherlands, Pete Hoekstra, did with Thierry Baudet’s Forum for Democracy in September, sparking a political firestorm. (Hoekstra denies the meeting was a fundraiser.)

 

The next fleet of top American diplomats is more likely to arrive with instructions to promote democracy, pluralism, human rights and the separation of the executive from the judiciary.

 

This does not mean that the politics of identity, anger and nationalism will fade away in Europe. By definition, nationalism doesn’t need foreign support.

 

Populist movements around the Continent have been fueled by the social changes of the age of globalization: widening social inequality, industrial and rural decline, divergent lifestyles and increased migration, both of people providing cheap labor from EU countries in Central Europe and those fleeing poverty and war in Africa and the Middle East.

 

Europe’s populists have been sidelined and wrong-footed by the coronavirus pandemic, which cannot be blamed on immigration or Islam. Some have mirrored Trump and the U.S. alt-right in opposing lockdowns and mask-wearing. Others, such as Le Pen, have argued for even greater protection of the public, notably through extended school closures.

 

But the economic distress unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic, much of which has yet to be fully felt due to temporary state support measures, is likely to give them a second wind in many countries. The upcoming transition to a green, digital economy will also provide fuel for anti-establishment movements, as France’s Yellow Jackets protests highlighted before the coronavirus struck. And a new spate of Islamist terrorist attacks in Europe has put populists’ signature issues of immigration and radicalization of some young Muslims back in the headlines.

 

Trump’s defeat deprives European populists of a powerful source of inspiration and political oxygen. Sadly it does not guarantee their demise.