Far right is the new normal
In most of Europe, the stigma against supporting far-right parties is gone.
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A right-of centre (by Swedish standards) coalition winning a Swedish election isn’t that big a deal.
But one particular political party being included in that coalition is a very big deal.
The Social Democrats won a plurality of the votes, continuing a winning streak that goes back to 1917 and proving to be much more enduring than another left-of-centre political party that also assumed power that year. But the electorate is much more fractured than it was in the days when the SocDems could win an absolute majority on its own, so they need coalition partners if it wishes to form the government.
The same coalition-building applies on the right, historically led by a party called - in classic Swedish fashion - the Moderates.
Or, at least the right was led by the Moderates until 2022:
A populist anti-immigration party has surged to become Sweden's second-largest political force after a national election dominated by fears of gang violence, which has given the once-safe Scandinavian country one of Europe's highest levels of gun violence.
Overall, a conservative opposition bloc including the anti-immigration party, the Sweden Democrats, had an extremely narrow lead over the incumbent centre-left with 94% of the votes counted.
[…]
One certainty, however, is that the result marked a success for the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats, which won its best result since entering parliament in 2010. The party's founders in the 1980s had links to fascist and neo-Nazi movements but over the past two decades it has worked to move to the mainstream under its 43-year-old leader Jimmie Akesson.
Its transformation included changing its official logo from a torch to a flower and expelling the most radical members.
Those who support it like its tough vows to crack down on crime and strictly limit immigration, while opponents fear that its historic roots make it a threat to Sweden's democratic identity.
Mark Johnson, a 50-year-old Swedish finance worker, said while the party's strong showing was expected, it is still shocking for many Swedes because "it's hard to understand that we would be taking such an obvious turn to the right, to the far-right even."
The Sweden Democrats, which won 20.6% support in Sunday's vote, according to preliminary figures, up from 17.5% four years ago, gained on the rising fears of crime in largely immigrant neighbourhoods.
The Sweden Democrats did well to finish third in the previous election, when even other right-of-centre parties were reluctant to work with them. But they’ve gotten too big to ignore:
There are several reasons for the sudden rise of the SD. One is the convergence of mainstream parties’ stances on immigration policy, which opened a space for an immigration-sceptical party. Another is the way that the SD leadership skilfully rebranded the party and developed its organisation. In the upcoming election, the SD will continue its growth. Anything but a major increase in support will be a big disappointment for it. Most opinion polls give the SD somewhere between 18 and 22 per cent of the vote.
The rise of the SD has had a profound impact on Swedish politics, and the party’s weakening of the traditional blocs has been arguably its most important effect. The Alliance parties, at least, still argue that their co-operation endures and that their goal is to govern in coalition together. The big problem is that the maths simply don’t add up. Neither of the blocs is anywhere near to winning its own majority. Just as problematic is the fact that the rise of the SD has taken place in parallel with the rise of alternative political issues. Most importantly, immigration, which used to be a second-order issue in Swedish politics, is now one of the voters’ main priorities. What is more, this issue has cut right through the blocs. In other words, the rise of the SD has not only undermined the scope for the traditional blocs to win parliamentary majorities. It has also exposed important intra-bloc differences.
[…]
…even if a majority of some kind can be achieved, the temptation to enlist the support of the SD will remain as long as the party stays as big as it is. In fact, while the leaders of the established parties still uphold a cordon sanitaire around the SD, local politicians have aired their willingness to deal with the party. In a recent poll, less than a third of the Moderates’ local councillors stated that they ruled out cooperation with the SD.
This does not mean the SD will end up in government any time soon. However, the cordon sanitaire is starting to fray. The SD leadership, with increasing confidence, has launched the idea of a new conservative bloc that includes, besides the SD, the Moderates and the Christian Democrats. It is unlikely that this dream will materialise in the near future.
That article was from 2018. The dream did, in fact, materialize four years later.
Meanwhile, in Italy, a bloc led by the “post-fascist” Brothers of Italy looks poised to take power:
With just over a week to go until polling day, the smiling face of Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the Brothers of Italy, is emblazoned on thousands of posters from the heel in the south to the Alps in the north.
When polls close on the evening of 25 September, Meloni is expected to emerge triumphant, making her Italy’s first far-right leader since the second world war.
Meloni has always distanced herself from fascism and recently declared that the Italian right had “handed fascism over to history”. Her current political success owes much to her decision, unlike that of Matteo Salvini and his Northern League, to keep her party out of the outgoing prime minister, Mario Draghi’s, cross-party government. The move cemented her as an opposition voice and has given her the leading position in a rightwing electoral coalition, that includes the League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, now polling in excess of 45%.
But she has been reluctant in campaigning to shed the political slogan Dio, Patria, Famiglia (God, Homeland, Family), widely used in the fascist era, and her party retains apparent fascist visual references. It shares its party logo, an Italian tricolour in the form of a flame, with the now defunct Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neo-fascist party formed in 1946 by supporters of Mussolini’s regime and former high-ranking members of his fascist party. Some supporters of her party have performed the fascist salute during public commemorations.
Some argue that Meloni (who is laser-focused on the major issues affecting Italians, like Peppa Pig episodes with same-sex parents, just in case you thought meltdowns over “woke” pop-culture was strictly an American thing) may become Prime Minister in no small part because fascism was never as socially unacceptable in postwar Italy1 as Nazism was in postwar Germany:
Antonio Scurati, the author of M, an international bestseller about Mussolini’s rise to power, said: “While in Germany there was a long process of overcoming the past, which had as a prerequisite that of making all German people reflect on the co-responsibility of the crimes of nazism, in Italy this process has never taken place. Whenever we speak about the war and racial laws in Italy, we always identify ourselves with the role of victim and anti-fascists, and this has prevented us from admitting to ourselves that we were fascists.”
Meloni has “unambiguously” condemned “the suppression of democracy and the ignominious anti-Jewish laws”, emphasising that her party has nothing to do with fascism and is a conservative champion of patriotism. She told Corriere della Sera after local elections there were no “nostalgic fascists, racists or antisemites in the Brothers of Italy DNA” and she had always got rid of “ambiguous people”.
“Let’s believe that Meloni is not a fascist. Let’s believe that technically her party is not neo-fascist,” Berizzi said. “You still can’t deny that in her ranks there are numerous fascists […] If Meloni wins the election, fascism may not be back, but our democracy will be at risk.”
To be fair, Mussolini did play a major role in defeating Hitler, but that’s another post.
Germany has its own established far-right party, the Alternative für Deutschland, but so far the cordon sanitaire around AfD has held up. It’s never been part of a governing coalition at the federal nor the state level, and its support appears to have receded since the Syrian refugee crisis was at its peak.
It hasn’t disappeared completely, though, and it still mustered just over 10% support in the 2021 German federal election. At the state level, especially in the former East Germany,2 it’s finished second with over a quarter of the popular vote in some recent elections.
AfD hasn’t died out like some predicted/hoped, and it seems to have a hard base of support that will win it seats in the Bundestag (Parliament) every time. In a country with proportional representation, where coalition governments are the norm, ten percent of the vote buys you a lot of bargaining power.
Germany is much more conscious of its dark past than other countries on the losing side in 1945, so AfD may never become as popular nor as accepted as its allies outside of Germany.
But they said the same thing about Sweden, not long ago. Just like they said Marine Le Pen and her Rassemblement National in France had peaked.
I’m hoping this winter won’t be as severe for a gas-starved Europe as some commentators say. But, if things only get one-quarter as bad as the most apocalyptic predictions, everything is on the table.
In his excellent book Children of Dictators, Jay Nordlinger wrote about how one of Il Duce’s sons was a moderately successful musician performing under a stage name. When he started using his real last name, the M-word, attendance at his concerts skyrocketed.
Die Linke (“The Left”), directly descended from the Socialist Unity Party of Erich Honnecker infamy, has been allowed to join in some state governing coalitions. But that’s another post.