Across Europe, the far right is rising. That it seems normal is all the more terrifying
Normalisation is the process by which something unusual or extreme becomes part of the everyday. What once provoked horror and outrage soon barely registers. The way the presence of Donald Trump became a mere fact of political life is perhaps the most familiar example. But the normalisation of the far right is happening across the democratic world.
Once Trump became “normal”, events that seemed even more extreme did too. A 2022 survey found that two in five Americans thought civil war was “at least somewhat likely” in the next decade. One political scientist speaks of the possibility of rightwing dictatorship in the US by 2030.
The same creep of normalisation is happening in European politics. At the turn of the millennium, when Austria’s far-right Freedom party (FPÖ) – led by Jörg Haider, who had made comments suggesting he was sympathetic to the Nazi regime – entered a coalition with the conservative People’s party, mass protests not only erupted in Vienna but across Europe and in the US. The EU even imposed diplomatic sanctions on Austria. It was understood that an important red line had been crossed; that given Europe’s blood-soaked history, the far right had to be kept firmly outside the tent.
No longer. When the FPÖ formed a new coalition in 2017, the protests were relatively small. Today, the party picks up victories in local elections and leads Austria’s opinion polls. Now the country’s main political force, it has every chance of leading the next government. Meanwhile, under pressure from its right flank, the People’s party has adopted ever harsher anti-migrant policies.
Then there’s Spain. For years after the financial crash, the country appeared to buck the trend of many European nations because of its lack of a rising far-right party. Leading lights in the leftwing Podemos party had an explanation: the mass indignados protests against austerity, which erupted in 2011, seemed to ensure that discontent was directed at powerful interests, rather than vulnerable groups such as migrants. But in the 2019 general election, the far-right Vox party – defined by its hostility to migrants and opposition to regional autonomy in Spain – came third, and in last weekend’s local elections exceeded expectations. A snap general election has been called for July, and Vox could soon be in government, the first time the Spanish far right would be in corridors of power since the fall of Franco.
The pattern is strikingly clear. In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is surging: one recent poll forecast it would come second in a general election, ahead of the ruling Social Democrats. While other parties claim they will refuse to work with the AfD at the national level, such relationships already exist at the local level, leading Foreign Policy magazine to recently declare that “Germany’s far-right ‘firewall’ is starting to crack”.
This is, after all, what happened in Sweden, where other parties refused to work with the Sweden Democrats party, which has neo-Nazi roots. In 2016, Anna Kinberg Batra, the leader of the conservative Moderate party, denounced it as racist. But in the last election, it came second, and negotiated a deal to prop up a rightwing government.
In France, Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party scored their best ever results in presidential and parliamentary elections last year. Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is of the far-right Brothers of Italy party. In eastern Europe, we have Hungary, ruled by a de facto far-right autocracy, with an even more extreme party – Our Homeland Movement – surging in the polls. Similarly, note Poland, ruled by a hard-right government which is now manipulating the Ukraine crisis to set up a commission to supposedly investigate Russian influence in the country: in practice, just a bogus excuse to harass the opposition.
How did we descend so far into the mire? There’s no question that growing economic insecurities and inequalities provided ample material for farright parties that offered scapegoating as an answer. If leftwing movements had proved more successful at redirecting that anger at the right targets – like politicians slashing social provision, bosses offering low-paid jobs and a financial system that plunged the world into crisis – then perhaps the far right would have enjoyed less appeal.
But they also wouldn’t be where they are without the complicity of mainstream parties. Trump is clearly the monster created by the very US Republican establishment – with its anti-Obama crankery, Islamophobia and hallucinated anti-communism – that now seems to abhor him. Across the western world, mainstream parties tend not to vigorously oppose the far right and offer an alternative vision of the future, but imitate their rhetoric and policies. All they’ve achieved is legitimising the zealots and allowing them to set the terms of debate.
We thought we had learned from our darkest moments in history. But unless the far right is once again treated as beyond the political pale, new horrors await.
and the caption “too queer for here”, and a fanny pack that reads “we belong here”. All of which had the folk at CPAC clutching their pearls in horror.
It’s weird that they have the time to devote to this hate campaign, by the way, because the group has its own internal issues to deal with: Matt Schlapp, the head of CPAC, was recently accused of groping a male aide. “Matt Schlapp of the CPAC grabbed my junk and pummeled it at length,” his accuser said in a video. Schlapp has denied this, but his accuser is proceeding with a lawsuit seeking millions in damages for alleged sexual battery and defamation.
As well as being shocked by phrases like “we belong here”, conservatives lost their collective minds over the fact that Target was selling a swimsuit geared towards trans women. “Did you know @Target also sells ‘tuck-friendly’ bathing suits for children in the Pride section? Well now you do,” a rightwing Twitter account with nearly 291,000 followers wrote. This was an outright lie: the swimsuit wasn’t for kids but that didn’t stop people melting down about it.
“Melting down” is putting it lightly. Conservatives went a lot further than just getting angry online or organizing a boycott. “Since introducing this year’s collection, we’ve experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and wellbeing while at work,” Target said in a statement about the 2023 Pride collection. The threat to employees was so pronounced that Target has removed some of the Pride merchandise in response.
Target was in a difficult position and needed to ensure its staff was kept safe. Still, it’s incredibly depressing to see big brands cave to violent intimidation campaigns. Conservatives have been very clear about what they want to achieve from all of this: they want to make corporations terrified to align themselves with the LGBTQ+ community ever again.
“The goal is to make ‘Pride’ toxic for brands,” Matt Walsh, a rightwing commentator, tweeted last week. “If they decide to shove this garbage in our face, they should know that they’ll pay a price. It won’t be worth whatever they think they’ll gain. First Bud Light and now Target. Our campaign is making progress. Let’s keep it going.”
Unfortunately, their hate campaign is still going strong. Last week, the Los Angeles Dodgers were bullied into disinviting the Sisters of Perpetual
Indulgence, a drag charity group, from a Pride event. (The Dodgers then apologized and re-invited them.) Now the outdoor apparel company North Face seems to have become the latest target. The outdoor company has been accused of “preying” on children by having – wait for it because this is really shocking – kid-sized merchandise in rainbow colours. They also featured a drag queen in a Pride advert.
North Face has so far refused to pander to the bigots and has stood beside the LGBTQ+ community. “We recognize the opportunity our brand has to shape the future of the outdoors and we want that future to be a more accepting and loving place,” the company wrote in a comment on its Pride post.
I hope North Face stays steadfast, and that other companies follow its lead. Certainly brands need to have a plan in place for what happens when the rightwing mob comes for them. Because the mob will come for them: what’s happening right now isn’t just a bunch of bigots getting angry; it’s a coordinated intimidation campaign. I don’t think this can be stressed enough. The same people who go on about free speech are actively trying to shut others up. The people obsessed with cancel culture are trying to cancel anyone who isn’t like them.
Companies can choose to stand with hate or they can choose to stand with love. Their LGBTQ+ consumers, and anyone who cares about equality, will be watching.
the hands-on control that nationalising the energy sector would bring, decarbonising electricity supply within less than eight years will just not happen. There are worries, too, that the growthis-everything approach trumpeted by Keir Starmer and the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, places GDP on a pedestal and sends the wrong message at a time when alternative metrics of progress would provide better measures of success in tackling the climate emergency.
The next Labour government will also need to take serious note that our world is facing a climate andecological crisis, so far more needs to be done to reboot the country’s degraded landscape and biodiversity.
And because we can no longer dodge significant climate-related consequences, there is an urgent requirement to address adaptation at the same time as slashing emissions. This means everything from reforestation to reduce flood hazard, to planning for water supply during periods of severe drought, managing retreat from at-risk coastal locations as sea-level rise accelerates. and greening cities to cope better with 40C+ summer temperatures.
The truth is that the Labour offer is good, but there is still room for improvement, The bottom line is that this country will not survive another five years of Tory rule, but even more importantly, nor will the climate.
Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL and author of Hothouse Earth: an Inhabitant’s Guide
stantial work on what would eventually become Undaunted was somewhat lightened by her 40-year career as a journalist. “I’ve been working on this material in one way or another for a long time, so I was prepared in a way to write this. And also, I’ve lived a lot of it in its own right, and a lot of my work has traced these avenues. So it wasn’t altogether new.”
Starting in the 1840s with pioneering journalist Margaret Fuller, Undaunted aims to document how women have changed American journalism. This includes, for instance, how women transformed war reporting during the second world war, when they were mostly only permitted to cover the home front. “Most were confined to the civilian story, so, once confined, they made the most of that,” said Kroeger. “They showed initiative and helped create a form, because now I think that’s become as important a part of war reporting as any other, which I don’t think was the case then. That’s a balance that’s tipped.” Kroeger went on to explain how women have also created change in news organizations, transforming how media institutions “change the way you care for the people who do the work”.
As Kroeger makes clear in the book’s preface, Undaunted is not an attempt to create a new canon so much as it wants to relate how women have managed to succeed in a field that “men have dominated in the 180 years since mass media began”. Guided by questions like “Which stories best illustrated what women were up against in their professional lives?” and “Assuming talent and hard work, how much did background, privilege, strategy, charisma, style, looks, advocacy, connections, or luck figure in their ascent?” the book focuses heavily on stories of transformation and innovation.
“My goal to make present the extent to which a women’s point of view changes institutions,” said Kroeger. “I think I make a pretty good case for how they have changed American journalism. It’s the experiences of women in the field: what they overcame, what they did, what they brought. Those would be the three goals. Not to canonize new people – although it would be great if people get their due. It’s a satellite view, not a helicopter view.”
Another thing that Undaunted demonstrates is that, while a certain number of truly gifted women were able to find a way to succeed in a maledominated field, it is only recently that the nature of journalism has changed, granting greater equality and access beyond those fortunate few. According to Kroeger, this is something that has only really come about in the past few decades, where women have become less and less of token figures or individuals relegated to certain undesirable beats, instead becoming central players in the field.
“I did an analysis of the Pulitzer prizes won every year – I’m really a nerd, you know, a super nerd,” said Kroeger. “So it takes 20 years for the first woman to win a Pulitzer prize – Anne O’Hare McCormick, 1937 – and then 14 more until Marguerite Higgins wins it for her coverage of the Korean war. Contrast that to analysis I did of the 10 best stories of the year – for 2000 to 2009, four of 10 were by women, and for the next group up to 2020, seven of the 10 were by women. How impressive is that?”
In addition to getting into major transformation in the field of journalism, Undaunted is also a delight for the many personal stories it relates. Kroeger shared how one theme she discovered was that “women are flowering after 40, which I loved about this book!” She was also impressed by the degree to which women were able to make the most of their people skills to succeed despite incredible amounts of bias and sexism. “People like Margaret Fuller, and so many of these women, are master networkers. I feel like that’s really great career advice. I mean, who gets to do that in 1840?!”
Ultimately, Kroeger told me she’s inspired by her own female journalism students, whom she believes represent incredible new talent that will continue to transform journalism in coming decades. And she’s also mindful that the nature of journalism is that it’s mostly meant to disappear – meaning that maybe one of those students will eventually succeed her in writing the next chapter of the story. “Journalism is ephemera, we are meant to disappear, it’s OK, that’s the nature of the work. You can’t feel bad about that, because it’s all about the work today. When someone survives that, it’s really extraordinary.”
Undaunted is out now