The EU and the Rise of Extremism and Populism: How to protect democracy and the rule of law in Europe?

While populist and extremist movements have been active in Europe over the last decades, they have recently benefited from a variety of issues which they managed to use to their benefit. The economic and financial crisis, security and immigration issues, unpopular European decisions are generally mixed with issues of national identity to generate simplistic solutions and far-right ideology.

In such context, there is a clear risk that these parties score high in the upcoming European elections. This is a serious challenge for all democratic and progressive organisations in Europe.

Extremism needs to be challenged to protect citizens’ fundamental rights and European democracies. But it needs to be done in a democratic way. Simply refusing to give these parties a platform would be both undemocratic and inefficient. It is a fine line to walk between preventing the damages radical populism may cause and the maintenance of the democratic principle.

Hateful speeches, populist discourses, xenophobic violence and authoritarian drifting should be addressed collectively at the European level, by all institutions and actors. Europe cannot do everything but has surely a role to play to protect democracy on its soil.

The European Humanist Federation has campaigned to promote a strong European action against the rise of extremism and populism in Europe. more specifically, we have promoted the idea of a new Rule of law mechanism to monitor the respect of human rights by EU Member States.

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What is populism? According to political scientists, populism is rather a political attitude, rhetoric or practice than an ideology, a programme or a party. There can be right-wing and left-wing populism, depending on the emphasis on different issues. Recurrent features: – it promotes direct democracy, claims a direct link between the government and the people and rejects the established political system; – it offers immediate and demagogical solutions to people’s day to day problems; – it spreads simplistic and antagonistic images such as the sovereign nation, the “sane” people vs. the “corrupted” and “technocratic” elites; – it idealises the nation and its perceived traditions, fuelling the criticism of any supranational political system; – it holds an anti-globalisation discourse aimed at protecting vulnerable people from the consequences of the competitive capitalist market.

Demagogy and xenophobia

Though left-wing populist movements do exist and can dominate the media agenda, they were rarely able to exchange it for political support. The rise of Syriza, a leftist coalition in Greece, to become the second largest party in Parliament is exceptional.

The radical right meanwhile was often able to capture third or second place in elections, even playing key roles in maintaining governing coalitions as in the case of Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party in in the Netherlands. Parties such as the True Finns Party in Finland, Vlaams Belang in Belgium, Golden Dawn in Greece, Ataka in Bulgaria, Freedom Party in Austria, Front National in France, Jobbik in Hungary, UKIP in the United Kingdom, the Northern League and Five Star Movement in Italy all won between 10% and 25% of the vote in various elections, making them credible political forces.

Of course, these parties are different from each other and hold their own political strategy; some of them are designated as traditional extreme right while others are called “neo-populisms”. Some have risen when the economies were growing (in Switzerland or in the Scandinavian countries) while others were founded during economic crises (in France, Greece or Italy).

Despite clear distinctive features, they are part of a similar story emerging across Western and Eastern Europe. All these parties or movements have benefited from the financial and economic crisis and strengthened in a context of disappointment of European citizens towards mainstream political parties and European institutions. All of them call for the “people” to rise up against the “corrupted political establishment” and offer seemingly reasonable solutions to problems created by supranational bodies and globalization. Several of them also glorify national identity and aim at defending the “European civilisation”. The True Finns Party in Finland for instance is against the use of Swedish, whilst Ataka in Bulgaria often rails against the perceived threat from Turkey. In Hungary, the nationalistic trend has been pushed very far by Viktor Orban these past years, as further described below. In Greece, the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn has provided basic amenities for “true” Greek citizens at a time of austerity, while ignoring or even bullying immigrants of the same area with the same needs, artificially creating a divide within Greek society.

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New strategies

Over time, extreme-right populist movements have also renewed themselves and become more “mainstream” and “acceptable” with new ways of organising and strategising. They have softened their image, removed traditional fascist symbols (not for all of them though) and nominated charismatic and sometimes female leaders (in Norway, Denmark and France for instance). They have also proved adept at using social media to influence young people (such as the usage of Facebook to organise English Defence League marches in the UK) contributing to their ability to creating a larger public presence than the number of their actual supporters would suggest. However, despite this apparent modernization, extreme right wing populist parties have kept the same ideology, espousing policies that would violate basic human rights if put into practice.

Thanks to these strategies and to political opportunism, right-wing populist themes have spread into the public space and pervaded traditionally moderate political discourses in Europe like in the Netherlands or in France. Beyond this recycling of populism by moderate parties, strong populist and authoritarian driftings have been raising great concerns in Europe, especially in Hungary, Greece or Italy.

The Female Face of Populism

Documentary by Hanna Ladoul, Matthieu Cabanes and Marco La Via

Watch the video