We’re allowing the Far Right to set the pace

In Europe as in the US and elsewhere in the world the authoritarian, anti-democratic Right is on the march again. It should be fought and stopped.

Remigration on a mass scale is now salonfähig in the political lexicon of Allianz für Deutschland co-leader and Kanzlerkandidatin Alice Weidel - and her party as a whole. Repatriation of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of refugees/asylum-seekers inevitably recalls the 1933-39 period (before the war-time Final Solution) when thousands among the half a million Jews in Germany were forcibly expelled or 'voluntarily' emigrated.

A similar (and even more extreme) policy, along with strict border controls and suspended asylum rights for refugees, is espoused by the FPÖ's leader Herbert Kickl who is on course to be Austria's Volkskanzler (he joyfully adopts the Hitlerian version of Chancellor) whether in coalition with the centre-right ÖVP or solo after fresh elections. (It will also be official White House policy after January 20, of course).

It takes the breath away how, on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the Nazi capitulation and the end of WW2, the Far Right is in the ascendancy across much of Europe (and elsewhere) and how some commentators, including those on the liberal left, try to relativise it almost to the point of explaining it away. As in: Young people with no memory/knowledge of 1930s Europe or feeling excluded or left behind...the ubiquitous fall-out of the capitalist crisis of 2008 et al.

Wake-up calls

It's far worse than that. Here's how one activist researcher put it: “Our studies in recent years,” said Andreas Kranebitter, the director of the Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance, a Vienna-based research institute, in an interview with Foreign Policy, “show that there is more racism and antisemitism in the population, and a higher number of people adverse to foreigners and hostile to immigration, than at any time in recent decades.”

This is true not only of relatively prosperous Austria but of neighbouring Germany, Europe's biggest economy suffering a serious downturn, and elsewhere in Europe, notably the Netherlands. Even the Nordics such as Finland and Sweden are affected, let alone Hungary and Slovakia and, soon maybe, the Czech Republic. In the UK we have the extraordinary spectacle of the defeated Conservatives under its first black leader lurching to the right to try and outflank Farage's Reform party - an outfit that, perhaps surprisingly, eschews remigration. Robert Jenrick, Kemi Badenoch's defeated rival for the Conservative leadership, uses discourse ("alien culture") that amounts to hate speech.

It's not just on now untrammelled social media that 1930s-style utterances, hate speech and mendacity, have become acceptable but in mainstream political class discourse. Nor can the coarsening of the language of so-called democratic debate be ascribed alone to the felon about to become the 47th US President. It is now commonplace across Europe and often goes unchallenged by increasingly complaisant opponents.

Similarly, the "broligarchs" of the US are cravenly competing to genuflect not just before Trump and his agenda but the far right programme. Diversity, equality and inclusion policies are abandoned along with regulatory constraint of social discourse in favour of unfettered capitalism, including a return to fossil fuel extraction on a grand scale. “We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled . . . it’s a new dawn,” a Wall Street banker tells the FT. “Most of us don’t have to kiss ass because, like Trump, we love America and capitalism,” another said.

In Europe Weidel, a one-time Goldman Sachs analyst, and the AfD excoriate the Green Deal and would dismantle wind farms/parks if they came to power. Their economic agenda is libertarian - de-regulation on a grand scale. A sense of despair engulfs one when she discusses with new supporter Elon Musk on their recent X conversation about how Hitler was a Commie...(the Nazis murdered tens of thousands of KPD members).

But, as with Trump, none of this matters in the way it would have done little more than a decade ago. In an extended essay published the day he died, Le Grand Continent's main point was that Jean-Marie Le Pen may not have won power, notably in his 2002 presidential campaign, but he has paved the way for his daughter and/or her protégé Jordan Bardella to win for the Rassemblement National in France. The Far Right RN is acceptable today, with MLP winning 41.5% of the second round votes in the 2022 présidentielles. She or Bardella could conceivably win in 2027 (or before if Macron quits early).

What is to be done?

As the Austrian essayist Robert Misik says, the liberal left has been unable to come up with attractive solutions in a world of economic stagnation, protectionism, geopolitical crisis or to combat democratic pessimism. He talks of the need inter alia to defend core values and promote economic renewal in a way that benefits all.

He and others also talk of forging broad coalitions where I would opt for popular fronts or republican solidarity to combat the Far Right in politics and the corporate world, a freshly minted new toxic duo wedded to authoritarianism and libertarianism (for them). We have not returned to the 1930s but must do everything we can to prevent such a retreat into the dark past. And certainly with more energy, commitment and passion than today's sullen resignation.