The results of Sunday's general election in France have brought some relief to Europeans who fear the formation of another far-right government in the European Union. But this is by no means the end of the story.
As there is intense debate about what the response to the rise of the far right in Europe should be, it is important to explore why this is happening in the first place. Beyond the usual explanations, deeper reasons for the rise of the far right lie in the rise of China, India and the Global South.
Let’s start by looking at some of the traditional explanations for this phenomenon. A decade ago, the term “populism” became a buzzword in the Western media. So-called populist parties were on the rise, from the Five Star Movement in Italy to Podemos in Spain. Brexit populists took the UK out of the EU in 2016.
One of the most widely held explanations for the rise of left- and right-wing populism centred on economics: Europe was in the midst of a debt crisis accompanied by counterproductive austerity measures. Budgets were cut, economies were in recession and unemployment was soaring. No wonder voters were turning to extremes, many argued.
Today, this thesis has much less explanatory power. While inflation has certainly reduced purchasing power, Europe is currently experiencing record employment. The European economy is certainly not booming, but it is not contracting either. And there is little austerity: on the contrary, European countries have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine with significant public investment.
A variant of this response is the reaction of some sectors to Europe's climate policies, such as taxes on gasoline, reductions in agricultural subsidies or rising energy costs.
It’s true that farmers’ protests played a key role in propelling far-right leader Geert Wilders to first place in the Dutch parliamentary elections. At the same time, however, the transition to renewable energy is bringing tangible benefits in the form of reduced energy costs. Italians went on a spree of home improvements thanks to €200 billion ($218 billion) of government-sponsored subsidies for energy efficiency; if there’s a green backlash in Italy, it has solar panels on its roofs.
Many analysts also turn to the question of immigration when trying to explain the far right. Voters, they argue, are reacting to the continuing influx of immigrants into Europe and the loss of a homogeneous culture. It is true that there is racism in Europe and the construction of a multicultural society is not free. And yet this explanation is equally inadequate.
The places where immigrants represent a truly significant part of the population – cosmopolitan cities like London, Paris or Milan – are where the far right does the worst in elections. Where immigrants are barely seen – the countryside and provincial towns, and most of Eastern Europe – is where it does well.
It is true that migrants compete with locals for access to scarce public services, but with unemployment near historic lows, the narrative that “migrants steal jobs” is nowhere to be heard. Instead, in the face of demographic decline, even right-wing governments are listening to industry’s demands for more migrants. For example, Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s right-wing prime minister, recently increased the number of work visas for foreign workers.
There is some truth to each of these three explanations, but none of them get to the heart of the matter. To understand what is happening, we need to change our language and our approach. We are not witnessing the rise of the far right, but the rise of nationalism.
This is happening at a time when Europe is experiencing relative decline compared to the rest of the world. As noted philosopher and analyst of European fascism Hannah Arendt noted in her writings, Europe's imperial projection served to reconcile internal inequalities.
In short, the impoverished French workers and the failing industrialists had one thing in common: they were French and did not come from the colonies. They considered themselves superior to the people who ruled their countries.
Even in more recent times, long after the supposed end of colonialism, an unbridgeable psychological gap separated the “first” and “third” worlds. A European, however poor, had access to opportunities, technologies and freedoms that few in other parts of the world could aspire to. The sense of privilege provided a powerful tool of social cohesion. The material reality of that privilege provided governments with enough wealth to co-opt the population through increased social spending.
But today Europe is increasingly marginalised. It is technologically backward in key sectors of the global economy (think of Chinese electric vehicles replacing German ones). It is geopolitically disoriented and militarily weak (think of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine). Its small nation states, too proud and short-sighted to truly unite, see their world rankings fall year after year. This has profound, if little-studied, psychological effects.
The nationalist right thrives on this sense of decay and disorientation. The proud “nation” is presented as a place of refuge, where cohesion, unity, familiarity and a sense of shared purpose can be rebuilt. Europe’s contemporary nationalism is not the expansionist, youthful fascism of the 20th century, but the nationalism of the provincial, the degraded and the exhausted.
If immigrants and minorities are the preferred target of the far right, it is for no other reason than the old strategy of building a community by identifying those who do not belong to it. By defining the “non-immigrants”, “non-homosexuals” or “non-woke”, a sense of unity is forged. Europe, in its search for internal social cohesion, has exchanged colonial wars for cultural wars.
If one were reading this from outside Europe, one could be forgiven for feeling a certain sense of schadenfreude – that feeling of pleasure one gets when something bad happens to someone else. However, before we celebrate this as an example of post-colonial justice, we should be aware that nationalism is on the rise all over the world – from India and China in the east, to Brazil and the United States in the west.
Disorientation, fear and anxiety are the key to our time. They are the common contemporary human condition to which nationalism offers a false but persuasive answer. Today’s great technological, social and geopolitical transformations are causing the rise of “my country first” attitudes around the world. Europe is no longer special. It is just a fearful part of a fearful world facing an uncertain and uncharted future.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
