For decades, the disparate right-wing parties of Europe have sought to reverse the seemingly inevitable leftward march of the continent. They have campaigned on platforms promising to liberate their national polity from the perils of globalization and the immense, tangled bureaucracy of Brussels. The past half-decade has seen these parties creep ever closer to victory.
Reform UK, the British party founded by Nigel Farage and running on an anti-immigration platform, is sitting in a comfortable lead over both establishment rivals. Alternative for Germany, a party deemed so right-wing by its opponents that mainstream lawmakers refuse to work with it, is dominating voter intention surveys. National Rally, the ever-present right-wing party of France, is on a path to victory despite the highly publicized conviction of its leader for financial crimes.
Germany, France, and the United Kingdom are three of the most pivotal players on the continent, and all of these right-wing parties will have their chance to flip their nations in the next three years. From the outside looking in, Europe seems like a powder keg of nationalist, populist resentment preparing to explode across the continent.
A rally for supporters of France’s National Rally, and Alice Weidel speaks to supporters. (AP)
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A rally for supporters of France’s National Rally, and Alice Weidel speaks to supporters. (AP)
The question is: If citizens across Europe do vote in a succession of right-wing parties to lead their most powerful governments, will these disparate groups be able to form a coherent movement?
The Hungarian connection
Hungary, formerly governed by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, successfully positioned itself as the Western world’s beacon of national conservatism. The premier spent the better part of his time in high office building out infrastructure that spoke to a traditional, Christian, and nationalist mindset. He provided lavish tax breaks for women who had multiple children, established a state secretary position dedicated to aiding persecuted Christians, suppressed the public promotion of LGBT lifestyles, and flipped the middle finger at the European Union every chance he had.
Orban embraced Hungary’s role as a global hub of right-wing ideology, flying over intelligentsia from other European countries and America, giving them cushy jobs at conservative think tanks and universities.
Orban’s worldwide relevance hit a fever pitch during the second administration of President Donald Trump, whom the Hungarian statesman had stayed loyal to even after his defeat in the 2020 election.
Though nationalists are concerned primarily with the integrity of their own nations, few view this as contradicting the pursuit of international alliances with like-minded partners in an equal partnership. Some, such as Balazs Orban, the former prime minister’s political director, view such alliances as essential for the survival of independent nation-states.
“The European right and everybody who cares about Western civilization should say, ‘We should win all of them.’ All of them,” Balazs Orban told the Washington Examiner in an interview, when asked how many elections in Europe had to be won in order to change the tide.
Hungary has punched far above its weight in this struggle, using the stability of the 16-year Fidesz party rule to create right-wing infrastructure that stretched across national borders, even extending across the Atlantic. Balazs Orban helped spearhead this struggle, founding the Mathias Corvinus Collegium in 2020, a conservative think tank that quickly established connections throughout the Western world. That Hungarian think tank and others have partnered with other international organizations to further plant their roots.
Balazs Orban sees elections in Europe more like battles in a war for the soul of Western civilization, saying right-wing parties need unity, but more than that, they need thoughtful leadership.
The kind of grandiose language pitching the current political fight as an existential struggle for the West is a common strain among nearly all European right-wing parties.
“Patriotic movements in the West are united by shared values that forge us into a common movement: the democratic nation-state rather than supranational decision-making bodies; national sovereignty rather than external control; the preservation of national identity and culture rather than multiculturalism and ‘woke’ leftism; and a Christian — not Muslim — character. Yet, on this shared foundation, we naturally also have distinct national interests,” Beatrix von Storch, the deputy parliamentary group leader of AfD, told the Washington Examiner.
Though Viktor Orban was ousted from power by Peter Magyar’s Tisza Party in April, he retains his leadership of Fidesz and has given no sign that he is ready to give up.
“The struggle for the soul of Western civilization did not end when we lost the election,” the former prime minister told the Washington Examiner. “American and Hungarian patriots stand on the same side in this fight.”
His ousting and Magyar’s extensive efforts to purge the government of his influence have jeopardized much of the right-wing infrastructure built up over the past decade.
United Kingdom: The odd one out
One of the defining features of the various right-wing parties of Europe is their positions on a dialectic between an inward and outward focus — on this spectrum, Hungary can easily be considered the most outward-focused, while Reform UK is the most inward-focused. In fact, the party chafes at the propensity of observers to lump it in with a continent-wide right-wing movement.
A Reform UK party supporter wears rosettes outside the party office in Clacton-On-Sea, England, Friday, June 21, 2024. Britain votes in a national election next week at a time of high public dissatisfaction over a host of issues. Many Conservative voters are turning away from the governing party, and some are switching to anti-immigration Reform. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
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A Reform UK party supporter wears rosettes outside the party office on Friday, June 21, 2024, in Clacton-on-Sea, England. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
“The situations are very, very different” in each European country, Lois Perry, director of Heartland UK/Europe, told the Washington Examiner in an interview. She is close with the party and familiar with its internal dynamics but not directly affiliated with it.
“Reform actually would not describe themselves necessarily as a right-wing party in the traditional sense,” she added. “… They would describe themselves as a common-sense party, a normal people’s party, which is why they’re attracting so many votes from the traditional left and the traditional right.”
Reform UK falls firmly into the French National Rally’s camp in its strong focus on optics and electability. This has earned it the scorn of some further right parties on the continent, many of which Perry said would dismiss Reform as “lightweights.”
Perry said Reform UK doesn’t have “any particularly strong ties” to other parties or right-wing figures within Europe, saying that the only real ties are from personal friendships and other relationships. The closest relationship is with National Rally, a relationship solidified through ideological affinity and a mutual focus on optics, not to mention geographical proximity and a shared history.
Reform’s predecessor, the Brexit Party, made a splash in the European Parliament before Brexit, and memories of Farage and other British figures clashing with pro-EU politicians still brings back strong feelings of nostalgia among many still in the bloc.
“As a Hungarian nationalist, I understand why the British nationalists voted to leave the EU,” Balazs Orban said. “But it’s a missed opportunity for them, and I miss them inside the European Union, because it would be much better to fight together with them against the liberal centralization of Brussels.”
Perry said the sentiment is common among the right-wing parties of Europe and was recently showcased during a visit to the European Parliament.
“‘We miss you guys! We miss Nigel Farage. He was a character,’” she recalled lawmakers saying with a laugh. “So in terms of having charismatic backup, then yeah, I get that.”
Despite the distancing from the EU, Reform is well aware that its fortunes are still influenced significantly by the results of upcoming elections on the continent.
“In terms of realpolitik … when Reform is in government, when Nigel Farage is the prime minister of the United Kingdom, it would be a lot easier to deal with a government which is not pro-mass immigration,” Perry said.
The AfD-RN split and problems of unity
While the right-wing parties across Europe are mostly united in grand civilizational questions and their top priorities, primarily immigration, maintaining an international alliance based on national interests is never seamless.
Balasz Orban said Germany and France’s right-wing parties are the most important to see succeed — a natural answer given they’re the two biggest power players on the continent. Unfortunately for the right-wing international, National Rally and Alternative for Germany get along the least of the major right-wing parties in Europe.
RN distinguishes itself with its focus on optics and electability, with longtime leader Marine Le Pen devoting extensive time and resources to its “de-demonization” campaign. This campaign has been a tremendous success in the party’s eyes, helping transform it from the fringe party that was crushed 82%-18% in the 2002 French presidential election to one viewed by many as the most likely winner of next year’s election.
AfD is a different story. The party has thrived with its irreverence for Germany’s sterile political scene, paying little attention to established taboos. Though much of its rhetoric would not be out of place in the United States, the hypersensitivity of a country that distinguishes itself as having definitively left behind its nationalist past has little tolerance for narratives that depart from the consensus established during the reconstruction of the country after World War II.
AfD’s leadership has largely gone to significant lengths to cull any language seen as sympathetic to the Nazi period of its history, but the party’s status as a decentralized coalition makes this more difficult than other, more message-disciplined parties on the continent. In May 2024, Maximilian Krah, an AfD member of the European Parliament, flew too close to the sun when, during an interview with the Italian daily Repubblica, he remarked that he “would never say that anyone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal.”
The comments led to a torrent of outrage from AfD’s then-ally, RN. AfD was expelled from their shared Identity and Democracy group, and two years later, relations still have not recovered between the right-wing front-runners of Europe’s two biggest countries.
RN is not the only right-wing party that has clashed with AfD over matters of history — Poland’s right-wing parties are known to be especially sensitive toward the issue.
The split has been institutionalized as well — RN and Fidesz co-founded the Patriots for Europe EP group, which, on July 8, 2024, became the third-largest in Europe with 84 members of the European Parliament. RN made up the largest constituency with 30 members, and other parties with representation include Fidesz, Italian Lega, the Czech ANO, Dutch PVV, Austrian FPO, Spanish Vox, Portuguese Chega, Belgian Vlaams Belang, and Danish DF.
AfD is not represented.
Part of the reason the split has remained in place is due to other issues the two parties clash on, mainly what to do with the EU and the Russia-Ukraine war. RN mainly follows leader Jordan Bardella’s stratagem of “change everything without destroying anything,” keeping the EU intact while changing its structure. AfD takes a firmer Euroskeptic stance.
The Russia-Ukraine war is perhaps the most emotional break between the two. AfD is more neutral on the conflict and favors detente with Russia to diversify its international partnerships. RN is firmly on the side of Ukraine, sharing the strategy of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of adopting the consensus view on the war to better ingratiate itself with the European establishment.
The schism has grown severe enough in recent months, with RN maneuvering in a way that almost seeks to box AfD out. The party has begun ingratiating itself with the center-right parties in Europe, primarily AfD’s rival Christian Democratic Union party, openly praising it while denigrating AfD.
FORMER HUNGARIAN PRIME MINISTER VISITED WHITE HOUSE AND STATE DEPARTMENT
In a May interview with a center-right German outlet, Bardella said many of AfD’s positions were “incompatible with our principles,” and liberally praised CDU Chancellor Friedrich Merz, an interview that shocked AfD lawmakers, especially due to Merz’s record-low approval ratings. AfD leader Alice Weidel suggested the remarks were made with ulterior motives.
The urge to ingratiate itself with the establishment to cement its legitimacy stands as perhaps the biggest barrier to a true continent-wide, right-wing alliance as envisioned by figures such as Balazs Orban. For the time being, the impulse has driven a wedge between the two most powerful right-wing parties in Europe and could lower the other’s electoral chances.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
