Located in northern France close to the Belgian border, Lille is a typically laid-back French city. It hosts Europe’s biggest flea market, and the city’s signature dish, tender beef slow-cooked in beer, is famous across the old continent. But on March 26, Lille’s biggest attraction was Marine Le Pen, leader of the French far right party National Front, and its presidential candidate. Since early morning, convoys of vehicles full of riot police were seen everywhere; policemen on horseback were patrolling the streets leading to Zenith Arena, the 5,000-seat indoor stadium, where Le Pen was scheduled to address a campaign event.
Inside, the atmosphere was electric. Supporters were waiting for Le Pen, waving flags, singing songs and shouting slogans. The stadium glittered with the red and blue blinking badges worn by them. Precisely at 3pm, Le Pen walked in and the frenzy was on a crescendo.
“Europe’s strength lies in its diversity, while that of France lies in its unity. Marine is our last hope to preserve both, before the Euromaniacs destroy everything,” said Vincente Lievremont, a 36-year-old plumber, as Le Pen took a break from her speech. “I have not been to church in the last 20 years. There are millions like me. But that doesn’t mean our churches could be replaced by mosques. The soul of France is Christian. Let it remain so,” he said. It is a refrain that is heard across Europe these days. This was one of the points stressed repeatedly by Le Pen in her speech.
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Her efforts to appeal to the insecurities of the French seem to have succeeded, at least in the first round of the French presidential elections. The elections held on April 23 saw the decimation of the traditional power centres of French politics. The Republicans and the Socialists, the two establishment parties, were eliminated in the first round. Le Pen, who finished second with 21.3 per cent votes, and Emmanuel Macron, a first-time candidate and political independent who topped the polls with 24 per cent votes, will now face each other in a runoff on May 7. Both traditional parties have already announced their support for Macron, and opinion polls say he has a comfortable 20 percentage lead over Le Pen. Yet, by polling an impressive 76,79,493 votes in the first round, Le Pen symbolised Europe’s growing fascination with far right populism.
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Political scientists believe that France, along with the rest of Europe, is witnessing a churn. “The bourgeois right in Europe has lost its credibility,” said Werner J. Patzelt, an expert on right-wing politics at Technical University, Dresden, Germany. “So, for a traditional right wing voter, the far right seems to be the only option.” Le Pen’s adviser Ludovic de Danne compared the rise of the far right in Europe with the BJP’s return to power in 2014 under Narendra Modi. “Modi’s victory was probably the moment when the world started shifting back to patriotic values. Then came Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. We are heading towards a more patriotic world,” he said. In Hungary and Poland, far right groups are already in power. Austria nearly elected a far right president last December. In Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Denmark and Sweden, their rise has been unmistakeable.
A combination of social, political and economic reasons seems to be aiding the tilt to the right. In Budapest, we met Andriska Pal, a young businessman in his early thirties. A supporter of the ruling Fidez party, Pal said Europe went overboard with left liberal ideology, and the rise of the right was a reaction to that. “Everything once considered to be taboo became normal. Abortion, gay marriage and what not? What is happening today is the fightback by the right.” Such sentiments are not completely absent even in more liberal societies, such as Germany. On a rainy morning in Berlin, Jorg Meuthen, co-head of the German far right party Alternative for Deutschland, spoke to us over a cup of tea, growing increasingly agitated as he explained how German Chancellor Angela Merkel had moved to the left. “Her positions changed so much over the years. She is no longer the conservative chancellor we elected. It is absurd. We want our country back.”
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What has, however, acted as an immediate trigger for the rising tide of far right sentiments in Europe is the refugee crisis that struck Europe in 2014. Germany alone received more than a million migrants as Merkel chose to open the borders for those fleeing war-ravaged countries in the Middle East and South Asia. While most Europeans remained largely gracious hosts, the sudden appearance of such a large number of foreigners, who looked different, spoke a different language and belonged to an alien civilisation, was a major cultural shock.
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Peter Saller (name changed), who works for an international organisation in Vienna, said drug peddling and gang wars had become more frequent in Austria. “Sometimes, the Chechens and the Afghans fight each other. Or it could be the Turkish and Syrian gangs. Since they come from war zones, their threshold for violence is really low,” said Saller. He said the criminal justice system in Europe was incapable of deterring the criminals among the refugees. “Have you seen our jails? For these refugees, European prisons are like free hotels,” he said.
The right wing seems to be winning the cultural argument, too. Most Germans and Austrians are reserved by nature and they frown upon the boisterous refugees. “Honestly, it is annoying. Perhaps, we are not used to it,” said Stephanie Meyer, a fitness trainer in Berlin, who is no relation of the vampire novelist. “They shout on the subway, dump waste in the backyard and treat women like servants. These strangers are unwilling to adapt to our way of life. We are witnessing a soft invasion,” she said.
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Matters became worse with a series of group sexual assaults allegedly perpetrated by migrants during the New Year celebrations of 2015/16 in several German cities, especially Cologne. Saller said women in Austria used to go out whenever they wanted and dress as they pleased. “But, not anymore,” he said. The Austrians were shocked when a 20-year-old refugee from Iraq raped a 10-year-old Austrian boy in a swimming pool in Vienna in December 2015. And, they exploded in rage after the Supreme Court overturned the guilty verdict against the perpetrator accepting the defence lawyer’s claim that his client thought it was a consensual act.
A series of terrorist attacks further added to the anti-refugee sentiment. France, Belgium and Germany witnessed major terrorist attacks, which alienated even liberals who were largely sympathetic to the migrants’ cause. In France, terrorist attacks have become routine with the latest one happening just three days before the elections. Le Pen demanded the closure of all Islamist mosques following the attacks.
The shift to the right is nearly complete in Hungary. Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who started his political career as a pro-western democrat opposed to the Soviet rule, runs the country like a one-party state. He now seems fascinated about “illiberal democracy”, a favourite theme of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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As Merkel threw open the borders for refugees, it was Orban who turned the debate on its head, calling her action “moral imperialism” and putting up border walls to stop the flow of people. Orban framed the debate as liberalism versus nationalism, said Balazs Trencseny, professor of nationalism studies at Central European University, Budapest. “Orban is telling the rest of Europe that, if not for him taking the risk and stopping the refugees, the entire Europe would be in peril.” Since March, refugees entering Hungary are detained in shipping containers till their antecedents are verified. And, in most European states, the debate now is about curtailing the flow of refugees, not about letting more people in.
Orban has also managed to paint the European Union as a neo-imperial power, whose sole aim is to promote globalisation. In his view, the growing economic woes of Europe are caused largely by globalisation, which benefits only the rich multinational corporations, and the EU frames regulations to ensure that this oligarchy is perpetuated. According to him, it is not the business of the EU regulators to tell a farmer about the size of the tomato that he could grow or the type of cheese he could produce. Such an argument resonates well with voters, who fear the EU is taking away their basic freedoms and choices. “The supranational authority of the EU accentuates the democracy deficit experienced by ordinary Europeans, making it easy for the far right leaders to paint it as the reason behind all their problems,” said Hartmut Elsenhans, emeritus professor of international relations at the University of Leipzig, Germany. Orban has reaped rich political dividends with this approach, making him the poster boy of right wing groups across Europe.
Le Pen’s strategy seems to be straight out of Orban’s playbook. In France, cities as well as villages, which were once immune to the charms of the far right, are now increasingly rooting for Le Pen. Roubaix, a city in northern France, was a citadel of the French communists for several years. The textile mills of the city, which gave Roubaix the nickname the city of a thousand chimneys, used to be the engine of French industrial growth. Yet, the collapse of the once thriving textile industry and the immigration of job seekers from Africa and east Europe have changed the economic and political profile of the city. More than half of its residents today are below the poverty threshold. The mills are all gone and some of them are converted into shopping malls that sell cheap Chinese goods. “We have repeatedly voted for the socialists. Some of us were communist supporters. But look at us today, the jobs are gone and outsiders keep coming in,” said Laurent Peltier, a security guard, who recently lost his job. “I was replaced by a young Pole. This common border craziness is killing us. I hope Le Pen would change this,” he said.
Speaking at the campaign event in Lille, Le Pen seemed to be targeting such disgruntled voters. “The time has come to defeat the EU and the globalists. “The EU will die because people do not want it anymore. Globalisation and multiculturalism, too, will go with it,” she said. Till a few years ago, such a speech would have been rejected as demagoguery and would have appealed only to the undereducated fringe. But today, the elites, too, listen and approve.
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While the far right leaders claim Modi as one of their own, the ascent of the right wing may not exactly be good news for India. The rise of the far right is hurting Indian immigrants in Europe, too. At Wilsdruff, a leafy suburb of Dresden, we met two Indian techies—one from Telangana and the other from Maharashtra—who seemed worried about the far right. “The far right PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West), which was founded in Dresden, continues to hold rallies against immigrants. We are afraid that they judge us by our skin colour, not our educational qualifications or jobs. It is not an easy situation for us,” they said.
“The foundation of the far right’s economic principles lies in protectionism—of domestic jobs, investments and technology. India is likely to suffer badly if Europe adopts such a policy. It could seriously hurt India’s attempts to reshape the global trading order into a multilateral system,” said Joshy M. Paul, who teaches international politics at Christ University, Bengaluru. This view was supported by Raju K.D., an expert in trade law and intellectual property rights at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He said the EU was India’s second largest trading bloc and nearly 17 per cent of Indian exports went to the EU. “Any impediment to this flow of goods will hurt our interests,” he said.
Veteran diplomat T.P. Sreenivasan, was, however, not so pessimistic. He said a right wing ascendancy in Europe was unlikely to affect India’s diplomatic relations with those countries. “Whether the regimes in Europe are liberal or restrictive, it will have no impact on our ties with those countries. In the past, we had excellent ties with capitalist and communist regimes in Europe,” he said. He, however, warned that we should closely monitor the fortunes of Europe if the far right came to power. “If Europe prospers under them, it will be good for us. But if it plunges into a crisis, it will hurt India as well,” said Sreenivasan.
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Meuthen was confident that the AfD’s policy will ensure prosperity in Europe, create more jobs and curb unemployment. As he said, the far right parties are today run by professionals, who are trusted by the public. Le Pen is a lawyer. Meuthen and Frauke Petry, co-leaders of the AfD, have doctorates. “Unlike in the past, right wing leaders are now seen as honourable members of society,” said Carsten Koschmieder, an expert on populist politics at the Free University of Berlin. “They are now invited to television debates; their profiles are featured in magazines. For the average voter, these parties are now like any other political party. Voting for them is no longer taboo,” he said. So, the National Front polls consistently around a quarter of the votes in France and the AfD hovers around the 10 per cent mark in Germany.
Similarly, the profile of the party sympathisers and members is changing. The National Front, for instance, is no longer a party of boorish old male chauvinists, homophobes, anti-Semites and skinheads. Two years ago, Le Pen kicked out her 89-year-old father, Jean Marie Le Pen, the founder of the party who had contested the runoff round in the 2002 presidential elections, for his inflammatory remarks about the Holocaust and for defending a wartime leader who had collaborated with the Nazis. She, in fact, does not even use the Le Pen surname, calling herself just Marine. Florian Philippot, the strategic adviser of her presidential campaign, is gay. On April 24, a day after she progressed to the final round, Le Pen announced that she was stepping down as president of the National Front, in a tactical move to widen her appeal among the moderates.
Yet, when needed, she can be as feisty as her father. Last year, when the French police raided the National Front headquarters to investigate charges about Le Pen misusing EU funds to pay her party workers, she started filming the raid with her mobile phone. After repeated warning to stop the recording, the officers tried to confiscate the phone. Le Pen put the phone in her bra, and dared the police to “come and get it”.
The young voters, on the other hand, are impressed by her discipline and professionalism. “The far right works on the political mobilisation of the young population, focusing on creating a new language of emotions,” said Andrea Peto, professor of gender studies at CEU, Budapest. “They are reenchanting the disillusioned youth, offering them compelling emotional and material reasons to join them.” So, the far right parties are now careful about using anti-Semitic and homophobic rhetoric and, in fact, take swift action against party members who commit such crimes. Peto, however, said the far right was using such issues not because they had a complete change of agenda, but because they replaced attacks on Jews with attacks on migrants and refugees, who came from patriarchal and homophobic societies.
A trip across Europe will convey a sense that the continent is ripe for a right wing takeover. If it does happen, Europe as we see today is unlikely to exist for long. Le Pen has made it clear that she will push for a French exit from the EU, a return of the franc and a more isolationist Europe. The EU might recover from Brexit, but its foundations do not seem so robust to survive a subsequent Frexit.
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Yet, the global far right project, which peaked with the election of Donald Trump, is facing a major pushback from all corners. The underwhelming performance of the maverick far right leader Geert Wilders, who was dubbed the European Trump, in the Dutch parliament elections held on March 13, is a case in point. The elections to the German state of Saarland, a bellwether of the German political mood, was another major disappointment for the far right parties. A week before the elections, Meuthen had told us that Saarland would offer a clue towards the far right’s future. After an impressive run of five elections in 2016, including a second place finish ahead of the CDU in the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state elections, the AfD scored its lowest election result in over a year in Saarland.
The performance of the Trump administration has also been a major letdown. “The chaos and confusion that continue to mark the US administration are hurting us. The educated middle class does not like what they see and they are rethinking their support to us,” said a far right leader.
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“Le Pen is not going to win,” said Emeric Christiansen, who works as strategic planning manager at Philip Morris in Paris. Christiansen and his wife, Alix, are conservative voters, but this time they are voting strategically to keep Le Pen out. “We will vote for Macron, although we are not very sure what his policies are,” said Alix. The couple said their friends, too, were likely to vote like them. The far right’s inability to attract such voters, especially the middle and upper middle class in the cities, could prove to be a major handicap.
The resistance seems building up in the countryside as well. At Simbach am Inn, a German town on the border with Austria, lying next to Adolf Hitler’s birthplace, we met Juge Wimmer, who ran possibly the town’s best cafe, along with her son Carl. When we told her that we had come to look at the rise of the far right in Europe, the 82-year-old’s first reaction was that they stood no chance. “Le Pen is crazy. So is Petry, Strache, Wilders and the rest of the gang,” she said.
She then introduced us to her regular patrons, offered us the town’s best ale, and explained to us why she and her friends hated the far right. “It is an ideology that thrives on hate, an ideology of the past,” she said, moving on to an antique piano, which occupied pride of place in the cafe. As she started playing Beethoven’s Fur Elise, the elderly couples in the cafe started swaying gently to the immortal tune. “What the world needs is love, not hate,” said Wimmer. “Several decades ago, we voted for hatred and paid the price. Europe will not repeat the mistake.”