Voters across Europe spent the weekend sending a message to EU politicians that a nationalist and populist turn is happening across the continent.
The European Parliament elections held over the past few days have seen the biggest victories for nationalist and populist parties in the history of the European Union.
As the results flowed in across Europe, media outlets reported it as an ominous EU-wide victory for the “far right.”
The news media presented the story as if fascism had once again reared its ugly head in Europe after eighty years of liberal peace and prosperity.
This is far from the truth.
The resurgence of the so-called “far right” is simply a mainstreaming of widespread and growing anger as ordinary voters focus their attention on issues that Europe’s established parties have refused to touch.
For decades, globalists in Brussels have promised Europeans that mass immigration will not affect their culture and can bring mass prosperity, that the green economy can unleash an economic boom and save the planet, and that fears of Islamic terrorism are simply racism.
Politicians used every scare tactic at their disposal to prevent Europeans from realizing the obvious: they were losing their countries.
Nowhere is this truer than in Germany, where both the center-left and progressive political establishments have been pioneering a series of terrible ideas for over a decade, from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow more than 1.7 million refugees into the country, to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ambitions to promote a “green economy” that has resulted in two years of almost zero economic growth.
Nationalist Turn
Such discontent gave birth to the bombastic, nationalist populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in 2013. Its leaders have made repeated gaffes with their extreme rhetoric, but they face greater levels of scrutiny than any other party in Europe.
They’ve been investigated by the federal government and faced heavy fines, and some prominent politicians have called for them to be banned outright.
Despite these controversies, when Germans voted in the European Parliament elections, the AfD came in second place and exit polls showed it to be the most popular party among former East German voters, blue-collar workers and even voters under the age of 25.
All of these groups felt that because the current system wasn’t working, they had no choice but to vote for nationalists, no matter how unbecoming their message may be in polite society.
Mass immigration and left-wing economic policies have made life difficult for Germans, leaving them feeling like outsiders in their own country.
Similarly, in France, President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party received less than half the support of Marine Le Pen’s Rally National.
Mr Macron has positioned himself as the continent’s pro-EU political leader and successor to Merkel for the past eight years, all the while battling rising tensions over inflation, immigration and maintaining France’s identity in a multicultural country.
Le Pen and her protégé Jordan Bardella had a simple message for the French people: Vote for us and we will stop the mass immigration that is destroying France and making it unrecognizable to the French people.
The new political “center”
“We have the courage and clarity to say that once France becomes everyone’s country, it will no longer be anyone’s country,” Bardella said in the final weeks of the election campaign. “With the relaxation of immigration controls, Islamic totalitarianism is not just ordering its fanatics to leave the French Republic, it is trying to conquer it and impose its laws and morality on it.”
The Rally National won the most votes in every region of France, among every age group and in every profession. In fact, the far right is more mainstream in France than the so-called centrists.
Macron’s defeat was so devastating that he has called for new elections for the French parliament to be held this summer, three years ahead of schedule.
Similarly, in neighbouring Belgium, Prime Minister Alexander De Croo announced his resignation following his party’s poor performance in federal as well as EU elections.
Nationalist populist candidates have emerged in parliamentary elections in 12 European countries.
With federal and local elections looming in France, Germany and other countries, the outcome of the EU elections could be a sign of more unrest to come.
Ryan Gardusky is the author of They Aren’t Listening: How Elites Created a National Populist Revolution.
