Europe is trending rightward

With all eyes fixed on a historic presidential election this fall, most Americans may be even less apt than usual to pay attention to political developments across the pond. But European politics can often serve as a bellwether of shifting political winds, as in 2016, when the shocking Brexit vote turned out to foreshadow the populist surge that propelled Donald Trump to the White House the first time. Could history be about to repeat itself?

This time, it is France, not Britain, in the spotlight. After his party suffered a crushing defeat in the European Parliament elections earlier this month, winning less than half as many seats as Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party, French President Emmanuel Macron shocked his own party and fellow heads of state by calling for snap parliamentary elections, to be held June 30.

Macron’s ascent back in 2017 had been heralded as proof that populism could be stopped in its tracks, that there was still room in Western democracies for a stable, technocratic, centrist leader committed to international institutions. Instead, Macron has watched his support bleed away to Le Pen, once considered a pariah for her fierce anti-immigration and anti-Islamist rhetoric. His gamble now is that the right’s success in the European elections was merely a protest vote, and that when actually faced with the prospect of giving National Rally control of the French National Assembly, voters will come to their senses.

Some commentators have seen this as a shrewd political calculation, reasoning that it is better for Le Pen’s party to win a parliamentary election now than the presidential election in 2027, and since much of National Rally’s popularity comes from its insurgent outsider status, a taste of actual governance would blunt its appeal. Most pundits and European leaders, however, seem to think this is a “sky is falling” moment for the European Union. “This could be the most destructive national election in the 70-year history of the European project,” warned one breathless columnist.

Le Pen, after all, as an outspoken critic of the EU and its immigration policies, is guilty of the arch-heresy of believing that national borders should matter again in Europe. This suffices to make National Rally “far right” according to the standards of European political correctness, but with the party now decisively leading in polls, it seems that “far right” is now mainstream.

The rising support for National Rally and parties like it across Europe, such as the AfD in Germany, is not hard to explain. Surging immigration, especially since 2015, has made many European nations, guardians of proud cultural inheritances, feel like their historic identity is under threat, especially with some immigrants espousing support for violent Islamism. At the same time, decades of un-democratic governance from the centralizing EU bureaucracy has led to growing resentment among voters, who are determined to take back their own destiny by bringing government back closer to home. And with climate policies crippling farmers and creating an energy crisis, plenty of ordinary, non-ideological citizens are eager for a change.

To be sure, National Rally and similar parties have at times flirted with racist rhetoric, and there is no question that some of their supporters represent a dangerous form of identity politics channeling suppressed rage against immigrants. We would be rash to ignore the danger of such sentiments, which could spark real violence in a country with France’s demographics. That said, what Europe’s leaders seem unable to realize is that belittlement and exclusion only fuel more resentment.

If you continue to tell one whole side of the political spectrum that they are simply off-limits and should never be allowed a share in government, you should not be surprised if you find unsavory radicalism in their midst. When, on the other hand, supposedly “far right” leaders have actually earned the chance to govern, as in the case of Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, they have proved far less terrifying than the pundits predicted. In fact, Meloni is now seen as a capable, pragmatic leader willing to work within real-world constraints to achieve results, and has established herself as a dominant force on the world stage.

Europe’s predicament holds ample lessons for American politics. Here, too, for more than a generation, elites have sought to make certain sentiments politically off-limits, disparaging their advocates as extremists even when they spoke for a wide swath of ordinary Americans. Here, too, this has simply fueled more resentment, and has backfired electorally—once already in 2016, and quite possibly again in 2024. Here, too, the refusal of the elites to have a serious discussion about the importance of borders and the good of nationhood has made it increasingly difficult to distinguish the sane right from the genuine extremism and racial ideology that is gaining traction amid the polarization. And here, too, we may hope that if actually given a chance to govern, conservatives will learn from examples like Meloni and be able to translate populist rhetoric into serious policy.