The Radical Right Won’t Save Europe

Right-wing parties are ascending across Europe, with some already playing a role in governing the continent’s most powerful countries, and others poised to do so soon. It would be a grave mistake to condemn these movements as betokening the return of fascism. It would also be a mistake to cheer them on.

It’s worthwhile to examine the rise of these parties in thorough detail. Recent victories by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in two recent provincial elections have focused attention on the right-wing party and its designs for national power. Last month, the AfD won 44 percent of the vote in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, and captured 38 percent in coastal Mecklenburg-Vorpommern two weeks later. Both states were part of the communist former East Germany.

While it was once easy to write off the AfD as the political manifestation of the anger and frustration that many in the heavily deindustrialized region continue to feel over 35 years since reunification, current polls placing the AfD ahead in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, indicate that the party can no longer be dismissed as a mere eastern phenomenon. Nationwide, the AfD stands at 28 percent, 8 points ahead of its closest rival, the Christian Democratic Union of Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Germany’s main governing party since the republic was refounded in 1949.

The success of the AfD as a party that political scientists classify as “far right” is being mirrored across the continent. In the United Kingdom, Nigel Farage’s Reform, an outgrowth of the United Kingdom Independence Party that helped push the country to leave the European Union, led national opinion polls for 15 months until the ruling Labour Party replaced its unpopular prime minister this past July.