How far right became Europe’s new normal
It was a scandal when a far-right party entered government two decades ago. Now it’s just routine. What happened?
Twenty years ago, on February 4, 2000, a shock wave reverberated from the heart of Europe: The farright Freedom Party of Austria, founded in 1956 by National Socialist activists, entered government. Led by Jorg Haider, a provocateur who had made a name for himself rallying against the “Uberfremdung” (“over-foreignisation”) of his country and notorious for praising the Waffen SS and Hitler’s labour policies, the party’s October 1999 election campaign achieved the best result for any far-right party in a European democracy since the Second World War, taking 27 per cent of the vote.
After months of negotiation with the conservative People’s Party, the Freedom Party was asked to join a governing coalition.
International condemnation was swift. The European Union’s 14 other nations bilaterally ended cultural exchange and joint military exercises, and the United States and Israel recalled their ambassadors from Vienna. Figures ranging from Prince Charles to the musician Lou Reed cancelled planned appearances. By mid-February 2000, when Haider was refused entry to Montreal’s Holocaust Centre, the far-right leader had become persona non grata — and his country widely rebuked as a pariah state.
But in 2017, when Haider’s Freedom Party successor, Heinz-Christian Strache, scored a similar general election result and the party was once again invited into a ruling alliance, there was little attempt to ostracise the country. President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany moved quickly to welcome the new Austrian government, led by the 31-year-old conservative Sebastian Kurz, who sought success by adopting much of the Freedom Party’s anti-migrant stance.
Crowds gathering in the Austrian capital to oppose the new government were a fraction of those who came out nearly two decades earlier, when protests were so severe that the new cabinet could only enter and exit the inauguration ceremony through hidden underground passageways.
Anathema no more
The story of Austria in the 21st century is, in part, the story of the wider European project. Once, the far right was anathema. Now it is routine. Born outside the mainstream, its parties now operate as a powerful political force, pushing public debate and often government policy across the continent. How did this happen?
The far right’s rise ultimately emerges from a crisis of the political centre. Politicians tasked with stabilising the Continent after the global financial crash of 2007-08 became adept at turning the political narrative away from their own culpability. Europe’s leaders found themselves re-evaluating the benefits of historic migration into their countries — forever initiating debates on “national identity” (Nicolas Sarkozy of France), rejecting the “multiethnic” make-up of nation-states (Silvio Berlusconi of Italy) and proclaiming multiculturalism dead (Angela Merkel of Germany and David Cameron of Britain).
The case of France is instructive. Sarkozy — the single-term French president from 2007 who announced that his country did not want immigration “inflicted” on itself — was the perfect foil for an insurgent Front National. In 2011, at the party’s compound in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre, I spoke to Marine Le Pen, who had recently assumed the leadership from her father, the convicted racist Jean-Marie Le Pen. She told me that attempts by the president to steal the Front National’s clothes would be unsuccessful in the long term. By presenting himself “as a kind of double of the FN,” Sarkozy had initially “managed to harness the force of that river and divert it to his own advantage,” Le Pen said. She laughed. “But now the river has returned to its own bed.”
So it proved. Le Pen’s far-right party successfully displaced the traditional conservatives (and dwarfed the incumbent Socialists) to make the presidential runoff in 2017. Though ultimately defeated by Macron, she still attracted over 10 million votes. Her rebranded National Rally party now finds itself neck-and-neck with Macron’s En Marche in the polls, cautiously optimistic of victory in 2022.
The taboo on the far right in government has been comprehensively broken: Mainstream parties appear happy to cooperate with those once considered “toxic.” Nativist representatives have been invited into ruling coalitions in Denmark, Finland, Italy and the Netherlands to act as support partners for traditional conservatives unable to win parliamentary majorities. No longer derided or dismissed by their mainstream rivals, farright parties now show themselves capable of winning nationwide elections.
The taboo on the far right in government has been comprehensively broken: Mainstream parties appear happy to cooperate with those once considered “toxic.”