.jpg)
The Guardian view on Europe’s radical right:
crossing the cordon sanitaire
Editorial
Progressive politics must respond to the normalisation
of formerly fringe views that are now mainstream
Tue 27 Dec 2022
18.30 GMT
The legacy
of a seismic political autumn is beginning to unfold. Just before politics
adjourned for the Christmas break, the migration minister in Sweden’s new
rightwing government announced a plan to make it easier to revoke residence
permits for immigrants. Maria Malmer Stenergard belongs to the centre-right
Moderate party, but at her side during the press conference was Henrik Vinge,
the deputy leader of the Sweden Democrats.
A
radical-right party that originated in fringe neo-Nazi movements, the Sweden
Democrats are not part of the governing coalition. In fact, until the landmark
election in September, when the party finished second, it had been judged
beyond the pale and excluded from power. Technically that remains the case. But
– as Mr Vinge’s presence testified – the reality is very different. Dependent
on the Sweden Democrats’ support to stay in office, the prime minister, Ulf
Kristersson, allows it to exert significant influence, particularly on
favourite topics such as migration and crime.
In
consensual Sweden then, the cordon sanitaire around the radical right has been
discreetly lowered. In Rome, 1,500 miles to the south, a still more startling
and far-reaching process of political detoxification has taken place. Four
years ago, Giorgia Meloni was a firebrand leader of a party with neo-fascist
roots, which scored 4% at the 2018 elections. Following Italy’s poll in the
autumn, which followed hard on the heels of Sweden’s, she is the country’s
prime minister. Her radical-right coalition also contains Matteo Salvini and
his anti-immigration League party.
In October,
Ms Meloni joined her close political ally in Hungary, Viktor Orbán
(emphatically re-elected last spring), and Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz
Morawiecki, to speak at a rally organised by Vox – a hardline Spanish nationalist
party. “Long live the Europe of patriots,” said Ms Meloni in a video message.
Polls suggest Vox, founded in 2013, could – like the Sweden Democrats – land a
kingmaker role at elections next year.
Creeping normalisation
Once
shunned and confined to the periphery of postwar European politics,
radical-right movements have thus penetrated the political mainstream. In
France, the idea of the cordon sanitaire was conceived to deal with the rise of
the Vichy apologist Jean-Marie Le Pen. His daughter, Marine, has effectively
broken through it, as she prepares to contest a third presidential election
when Emmanuel Macron steps down. A poll this month for Le Monde found that 48%
considered Le Pen and her party to represent a “patriotic right”, compared with
36% who associated her with the “nationalist and xenophobic right”. The survey
also found that Rassemblement National’s substantial presence in the French
Assembly, following last spring’s election, means that it is seen by most
voters as the main opposition to Mr Macron.
Normalisation
has been a decade-long process. The crash, the eurozone debt crisis and the
misguided austerity policies that followed inculcated anti-elite sentiment,
allowing the radical right a hearing. Anti-lockdown sentiment and conspiracy
theorising during the pandemic have offered further opportunities. But it is,
above all, on the issue of migration that views once considered extreme are now
dictating the terms of mainstream debate.
For it is
not only in Ms Meloni’s Italy, or Mr Orbán’s Hungary, that “great replacement”
rhetoric is determining policy towards migration from Africa, Asia and the
Middle East. Denmark’s Social Democrats regained power in 2019 by aping the
approach of the populist, anti-immigrant Danish People’s party. Under the
leadership of the prime minister, Mette Frederiksen – who has just won a second
term – the Social Democrats have backed a cap on non-western immigration, and
in 2021 Denmark became the first European country to try to send refugees back
to Syria.
On economic
matters, the outlook is less bleak. In the context of an energy and cost of
living crisis, access to power has been accompanied by a cautious moderation of
tone. As Britain rues the chaotic consequences of its Brexit referendum, for
example, leaving the EU no longer features in the radical-right playbook. Ms
Meloni knows that she must ensure Italy’s access to €200bn of EU recovery fund
money, and has taken care to operate within the policy guardrails established
by her technocratic predecessor, Mario Draghi. A radical tax-cutting programme
has been scaled back. On Ukraine, Ms Meloni has remained in lockstep with
Brussels and Washington.
Brussels fights back
Money has
also talked in the east, where Poland and Hungary have played cat-and-mouse games
with the EU as it seeks to impose rule of law and anti-corruption norms. Amid
acute financial pressures and domestic discontent, this month Warsaw signed up
to judicial reforms required by Brussels in order to access €34bn in
post-pandemic funding. Faced with member states that delight in rejecting its
values and norms, the EU is increasingly prepared to use financial firepower to
fight back.
But as the
future of Europe is defined in a volatile and increasingly multipolar world,
weaponising fiscal largesse may not be enough. On issues such as LGBT and
minority rights, abortion, race and immigration, the empowered nationalist
right will seek to undermine liberal norms in the name of an authoritarian
worldview that has little interest in universal rights. For the EU, which
remains an essentially technocratic organisation, this is treacherous terrain.
In a new book entitled Europe’s Coming of Age, an adviser to former presidents
of the European Commission, Loukas Tsoukalis, notes that, as essentially bureaucratic
organisations, “Brussels institutions are never comfortable dealing with
identity and cultural issues”. The same could be said of the European
centre-left, which has been slow to grasp the resentments and grievances
exploited and then channelled into culture wars by formerly fringe populists.
Europe’s
population is ageing and shrinking as a result of declining birthrates, and
migrant labour will become an economic necessity in the decades ahead. Among
the young, liberal attitudes on social questions are deeply entrenched and will
ultimately shape the future. But an illiberal counterinsurgency, with roots in
once-ostracised political traditions, has installed itself at the heart of the
European body politic. In 2023 and beyond, progressive forces must find ways to
understand its appeal more deeply and offer different, better solutions.
Working towards a humane, fair and functioning Europe-wide policy on refugees
and migration would be a start.
This article was amended on 28 December 2022.
Loukas Tsoukalis is an adviser to former presidents of the European Commission,
not a former president himself as an earlier version said.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário