The European Union and the Mainstreaming of the Radical Right.

AuthorKallis, Aristotle
PositionCOMMENTARY - Essay

Violent Extremism and the Crisis of Liberal Values

What we nowadays call the European Union (EU) has changed dramatically in the 51 years of its existence. It has grown in members, expanded geographically and developed institutionally. It has also become far more complex, cumbersome even, and more far-reaching than perhaps any of its initial founders would have ever dared to hope. Yet something central has, in theory, remained the same: the EU has always been--and continues to be--rooted in a set of values that derive from the post-war liberal consensus. Democracy, pluralism, pacifism, respect for individual human rights, freedom of movement, an institutional setup geared towards greater supranational integration, a new model of mixed sovereignty that pointed, however tentatively, in a post-national direction (1)--these and other similar values have been considered and treated as belonging to the genetic makeup of the EU.

But what happens when this consensus is facing its most serious, concerted challenge, from within the EU as well as from outside? The world that we inhabit in 2018 is dizzyingly different from the one that many took for granted only a decade ago. As one of the European Commission's Vice-Presidents, the former Prime Minister of Finland, Jyrki Katainen, noted recently, the rise of Euroscepticism now poses an existential threat to the EU. (2) It is not just Brexit or even the avalanche of statistics over the last years pointing to declining trust in the Union. (3) Instead, the rise of populist parties of various political shades in many EU member states, some of which have now entered the government or may do so in the near future, has cast a grave shadow on the continuing commitment to these liberal values. (4) Meanwhile, the worldwide financial and refugee crises, as well as the recent backsliding into protectionism, (5) have put unprecedented strain on the principles of solidarity and free movement that constitute the pillars of European integration. From the viewpoint of 2018, it seems that Europe and the wider world are moving decisively towards a period of reassertion of an ever more narrow and exclusive national sovereignty. (6)

It is the non-mainstream right that has attracted the bulk of analysts' attention in this regard. This broad, diverse family extends from radical, populist and anti-establishment but non-violent organized parties of the right, to clandestine terrorist individuals and groups fighting their own version of culture wars on the terrain of ultra-nationalism, anti-immigration, anti-multiculturalism, anti-globalization, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic identity politics. (7)

There have been growing concerns about the threat posed by far right violence, whether coming from organized movements, informal networks or individuals. (8) Especially since the turn of the new millennium, the threat of violent radicalization has received fresh attention, especially in light of the terrorist attacks that illustrated its highly destructive potential and complex transnational links. Taken together with the appreciable rise in instances of hate speech and in violent incidents against vulnerable groups, it is now feared that we may be witnessing a much broader and more profound 'reverse wave' toward more intolerance, exclusion, and normalization of violent extremism in contemporary societies. (9) For too long played down or ignored by the EU and national governments alike, the danger of violent far right extremism has recently come to be recognized as one of the most significant existential threats to the Union and its member states. (10)

Yet it is the challenge posed by the radical, non-violent parties of the non-mainstream right that has been making the most of the headlines in recent years. These parties are becoming increasingly successful in a number of critical fields, from securing a high(er) share of the popular vote and entering government, to influencing the political agenda and shifting social attitudes. Their vision of a nativist, 'fortress' Europe, nationalist and mono-cultural, made up of fully sovereign nation-states, has been steadily gaining traction among disaffected voters. As a result, the European political and social mainstream has been shifting in a sovereigntist direction that challenges 60 of European integration and casts a shadow on its future prospects.

The Rise and the Continuing Rise of the Radical Right

Until recently, the rise of the radical right was largely presented in terms of an unfolding threat rather than a concrete reality. These parties tended to poll better in local, regional, and European elections while usually falling short in national ones. For example, in the most recent (2014) elections for the European Parliament, the 'Europe of Freedom and (Direct) Democracy' group grew from 34 to 45 MEPs, while strong parliamentary constituencies of the radical right now appear in the 'Independents' group with a cumulative strength of 52 MEPs. Parties of the radical/populist right polled very strongly in a large number of European countries and delivered a political 'earthquake,' coming first in France and Britain while increasing their share of the vote in Greece, Hungary, Italy, and elsewhere. (11)

Since 2014, however, parties of the radical right have made their presence felt more emphatically in the electoral field, including countries where they were previously unsuccessful or under-represented. The landscape changed dramatically after more recent elections in Austria (where the Freedom Party secured 26 percent in 2017), France (where Marine Le Pen received 21.30 percent and 33.90 percent in the two rounds of the 2017 presidential elections), Hungary (where Jobbik scored 19 percent in 2018), Germany (where the Alternative for Germany nearly trebled its vote to 12.6 percent), and more recently Italy (where the Lega's share of the vote climbed to 17.37 percent, in addition to the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement's 32.66 percent). In hindsight, the respite in right wing ascension signaled by the victory of the centrist, pro-EU Emmanuel Macron in France (12) and the collapse of electoral support for the right wing UKIP (from 12.8 percent in 2015 to 1.8 percent) (13) proved temporary and not enough to change the dynamics of the overall trend of populist parties of the right making significant inroads at the expense of traditional mainstream parties of the previously dominant liberal, globalist, and pro-EU consensus.

What is particularly striking is the disproportionate impact of this upward trend for the radical right on the traditional mainstream political parties. In the last decade, there has been a dramatic collapse of support for the center-left in many European countries. Many social democratic parties that had dominated the political scene in previous decades have seen their electoral appeal decline dramatically (as in the case of the Socialist Party in France and Spain, the Democratic Party in Italy, and the Social Democrats in Germany) or collapse altogether (as happened in Greece, the Czech Republic, and the Netherlands). (14) In comparison, the recent electoral fortunes of the center-right paint a significantly more mixed picture: the decline of Silvio Berlusconi's party in Italy and the Republicans in France has been matched by a growing share of the vote for the Austrian People's Party (from 24.5 percent to 31.7 percent), the Law and Justice Party in Poland (up 7.69 percent to 37.58 percent), and even more impressively the Hungarian ruling Fidesz (49.5 percent in 2018, up 4.40 percent).

The Ideological Porosity between Radical and Mainstream Right

It is far from a coincidence that the nominally center-right parties that bucked the trend of mainstream electoral retrenchment have benefited from a hardening of their ideological platform towards immigration, Islam, globalization, and European integration. (15) The case of Hungary is the most instructive in this respect. In the midst of the 2015 refugee crisis, the...

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