The Rise of the European Far Right

From an outsider’s point of view, the Swedes are an enigma. We label them as the peaceful, progressive folk who appear to merrily oblige the government’s exorbitant income tax (the highest rates remain just shy of 60%) and who offer one of the most generous asylum policies in Europe. Yet, Sweden’s economy rebounded from the recession with unexpected speed and strength, forecasting an economic growth of 4.8% for 2010 and overtaking the U.S. to place second in this year’s ranking in the Global Competitiveness Report published by the World Economic Forum. To borrow a detective analogy, the Scandinavian quasi-socialist economic model is to Sherlock Holmes what the Anglo-Saxon laissez-faire policy is to Inspector Lestrade: the former’s unorthodox and sometimes alien methodology can sometimes bear more fruit than the latter’s.

It seems surprising, then, when the election held in September denied the incumbent Moderate party leader Fredrik Reinfeldt a parliamentary majority and increased the far-right Sweden Democrats’ representation from zero to twenty seats. The center-left Social Democrats, which ruled Sweden for 65 of the past 78 years, suffered a humiliating loss as it won 156 seats to the Moderate-led center-right coalition’s 173, its worst result since 1914. Although both the center-right Alliance bloc and the center-left Red-Green opposition have rejected cooperation with the Sweden Democrats, Mr. Reinfeldt’s minority government now faces the dreaded possibility of having to appease the far-right in order to pass key legislation.

The rise of the far right, often disguised under the term “nationalism,” is not limited to Sweden. The tide has reached many other western European countries, most notably the Netherlands and Austria. In the Netherlands, the anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party won 24 seats in the general election last June, reducing the Christian Democrats’ representation from 41 to a mere 21 and ending their decades-long domination in the parliament. Mr. Wilders now enjoys a considerable influence over the minority coalition of the Dutch Liberal Party and the Christian Democrats, which has already pledged to ban the burqa, halve immigration, and cut public spending by €18 billion.

Austria also experienced a recent lurch to the right, as the far-right Austrian Freedom Party, led by Heinz-Christian Strache, won 27% of the votes in Vienna’s provincial election in October. The Freedom Party’s dramatic increase in votes and popularity (up from 14.8% in 2005) only emphasizes the erosion of the Social Democrats’ influence in a city once dubbed as das Rote Wien, or “Red Vienna”. In fact, Mr. Strache’s 27% came second only to the Social Democrats’ 44%, their worst result since 1996. The Freedom Party’s campaign ran on slogans such as “more courage for our Vienna blood,” and promised to ban Islamic headgear as well as minarets – though there is only one such structure in Vienna.

Throughout history, economic downturn and job insecurity have often led to an increasing popularity of the right. The Sweden Democrats, the Dutch Freedom Party, and the Austrian Freedom Party all garnered votes by appealing to the white working class, typically in areas that have recently seen a large influx of immigrants. These anti-immigrant parties have already won comparisons to the Nazis, with their anti-Muslim rhetoric resonating with Hitler’s platform of blaming the Jews for the Weimar Republic’s hyperinflation-plagued economy.

The far-right parties’ reliance on using Muslim immigrants as a scapegoat for unemployment means their fifteen minutes of fame will likely expire when the economy recovers. However, the European governments must realize the recession alone did not contribute to their rising popularity, and that the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment is also widely responsible for the far-right’s ascension into public consciousness.

As such, efforts to assimilate the immigrants through methods including compulsory education of the native language are necessary to welcome them into European society. Although the far right has demanded the imposition of strict limits on immigration, simply ignoring these radical demands in the parliament is not enough to solve Europe’s immigration issues. Attempts to censor them has proven futile—the Swedish commercial television network TV4 refused to broadcast a campaign advert by the Sweden Democrats, which portrayed a group of women in burqas charging past a white pensioner to snatch the national budget, claiming that it contained hate speech—but perhaps the worst solution may be the Dutch model, in which the far right is handed the power without the necessary responsibility and accountability.

Allowing the far-right in the government may most effectively and swiftly expose their inability to actually govern. When Austria’s Freedom party, then under the leadership of Jörg Haider, won 27% of the vote in 1999, the People’s party head Wolfgang Schüssel formed a coalition government with them in 2000 that some quipped as a pact with the devil. But while in government, the FPÖ failed to deliver their campaign promises and picked fights with the EU, petitioning to veto the Czech Republic’s EU membership. As a result, by 2002 their support fell by two-thirds to almost 10%.

Simply silencing the xenophobic rabble on the right is not the answer. Voters see supporting them as a way of venting their discontent, and censoring them may merely increase voter sympathy towards these parties. But the far right’s increasingly loud and influential voices are an indication that the more moderate, incumbent parties can only discredit their opponents by addressing their nations’ social and economic issues first. If they fail to do so, they run the risk of allowing the Wilders and Straches exploit the opportunity and seize power in the parliament. It would be a shame to see all of the European Union’s post-World War II efforts for progress and unity go to waste.