Responding the gloominess of recent posts, I thought I’d try a piece that’s more optimistic about Europe, if not about the US. It’s a mashup of a couple of recent Substack newsletters.
The New York Times has a thumb-sucker about the rise of the European far right, which would greatly mislead anyone not up with the facts. The picture is one of inexorable advance, citing parties such as “the Party for Freedom of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, the Sweden Democrats and the Reform U.K. party of Nigel Farage.”
The New York Times doesn’t mention that:
- The right-wing coalition of which Wilders was part collapsed when he withdrew support and lost the subsequent election. Wilders’ party split and is competing with two other far-right parties, also in opposition.
- The right-wing Swedish coalition, which had promised the Sweden Democrats a role, was defeated at the recent election, with the SD vote declining.
- Farage’s Reform party has also split, and Farage himself is now massively unpopular.
There have been more consequential losses than this. The most successful far-right government in Europe, that of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz in Hungary, was crushed in elections earlier this year, and the party is now splitting. Poland’s Law and Justice Party (PiS) lost office in 2023 and has now also split.1
Other successes have turned sour for the far right. Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, a successor to various neo-fascist parties, won elections in 2022 and has held together since then. But the government hasn’t delivered much of the far-right agenda, beyond stunts like a recently announced ban on burqas in schools. The Finns Party’s participation in a right-wing government (in Finland, obviously) has seen a big loss of popularity.
Europe isn’t out of the woods yet. A victory for the National Rally in the French election next year would pose some significant problems. But compared to the defeats listed above, the fact that the German AfD might form the government of a small German state is not a big problem.