A Rightward March
Giorgia Meloni, leader of Fratelli d’Italia, on election day. Source for picture: The New York Times
Recently, elections in two prominent European countries, Sweden and Italy, have ignited alarm and debate. The Sweden Democrats (SD), a far-right party with ties to Neo-Nazi groups, are positioned to take a significant share of seats in parliament. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni and her party, Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), will lead the most far-right government since the Mussolini regime of the 1940s. Given the backdrop of contemporary war in Europe, rising energy costs and inflation, and increased immigration, the region’s politics display an alarming trend.
Sweden
The rise of the far-right in Sweden is deeply complex. Being the largest member of the Nordic bloc in Europe, the country has long represented a universalist model of governance and social solidarity. Characterized by its support for a generous welfare state, the left-wing party – Social Democrats – has dominated Swedish politics since 1917. Since World War II, there have only been five elections in which center-right parties have secured enough seats to form a government. Now, the conservatives are poised to take power once again.
In the most recent elections, the SD received about 20 percent of the vote, the second largest share. This number is a vast improvement from the party’s 6 percent showing in 2010. Combined with the center-right’s vote share, the new conservative coalition government will have significant SD influence. While it is likely that Ulf Kristersson of the Moderates will become the next Prime Minister, his job in forming a government will be difficult. With the SD taking in a vote share even larger than the Moderate Party, Kristersson will have to make significant concessions to the far-right to have a functioning government.
Commentators have described the SD party similarly to other right-wing parties – anti-immigrant, anti-Islam, Eurosceptic, anti-LGBTQ+, and obsessed with crime and law and order. To say that the party has fascist roots is not just a euphemism. The SD was formed in 1988 from a Neo-Nazi group, Keep Sweden Swedish. Many of the founders had Nazi affiliations. In the 90s, the party tried to clean its image, attempting to distance itself from its fascist past. Yet, while some of the visual veneers changed, the party's core ideology remained – protecting the purity of Swedish culture.
The party has continued its attempt to moderate its rhetoric, but contemporary leaders are equally troubling. The party’s Chief of Staff, Linus Bylund, recently drew ire for his comments characterizing certain journalists as “enemies of the nation.” An even more alarming nod to World War II-era Europe came the night of the 2022 elections. Celebrating the weekend's results, an SD city council candidate, Rebecka Fallenkvist, uttered the words, “Helg seger.” The phrase, translated as weekend victory, is an odd ordering of the words that many claim is a pun on the Swedish translation – “Hell seger” – of the Nazi salute, “Sieg Heil.” Fallenkvist has since refuted this, claiming she misspoke.
The most evident similarity to other far-right parties is the SD’s stance on immigration and tough-on-crime policies. Before the election, an SD spokesman tweeted a photo of a subway train car with the message, “Welcome aboard the repatriation express. Here’s a one-way ticket. Next stop, Kabul!” The party has also released an aggressive 30-point plan to create the most restrictive immigration policy in Europe. The growth of the SD has been attributed to the country’s increased flow of migration since the mid-2010s. The party banked on tying the recent increase in gun violence, coupled with rising inflation and energy costs, to the issue of immigration. These efforts appear to have been somewhat successful considering the number of new voters aged 18 to 21 that support the SD doubled in the 2022 election.
Italy
The politics in Southern Europe could not be more different than that of their northern Nordic neighbors but have resulted in similar election outcomes reflecting the increasing strength of their far-right parties. Not long after the Swedish elections, the Brothers of Italy party led an ultra-conservative coalition to victory. Now its leader Giorgia Meloni is expected to be the country’s first female Prime Minister.
Until recently, given the concessions by the Moderate Party, the Sweden Democrats have been somewhat marginalized in formal Swedish politics. This is not the same story for elements of the far-right in Italy. The specter of Italian fascism looms heavily, and the history of Meloni and her party does not ease this worry.
The Brothers of Italy was formed in 2012. The party uses iconography from the post-fascist National Alliance party, which was itself an offshoot of the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), an attempted moderation of the 1946 party formed by Benito Mussolini’s followers. Meloni herself was a youth activist in the MSI at the age of 15, even becoming the president of the youth arm of the organization, then working her way up the ranks of the National Alliance.
As is in Sweden, Meloni and her party are vehemently anti-immigrant but also lean much more into cultural fights most prominent in the U.S. In the past Meloni has raised concerns for reproductive rights and queer activists by calling abortion a “tragedy” and frequently referencing the “LGBTQ Lobby.” Even criminalizing surrogacy is on the table for the party. Their motto, “God, family, fatherland,” represents a direct link to Mussolini, while leaving little room for anything other than the limited rendering of what those three things mean. In the context of varying forms of right-wing ideology, there is a general adherence to nationalistic patriotism and traditional religious and familial beliefs. With respect to God, this usually entails the most conservative form of Christianity, and family evokes notions of traditional gender norms and family units. The reference to fatherland again elevates the importance of national identity for far-right parties. Recent comments from Meloni have signaled her fidelity to all of these ideas - stressing the importance of womanhood, motherhood, and her Christian Italian identity. The three-pronged motto mentioned above is reminiscent of a motto used by a nationalist party in Malta and similar mottos used by Bennito Mussulini.
While the far-right's rise in Italy certainly owes itself to residues of the past, contemporary conditions in the country have exacerbated this push to the right as well. Like many other countries, Italy is experiencing soaring inflation, rising energy costs, growing inequality, and a post-COVID transition. The country is particularly vulnerable to high energy costs as almost half of all imported gas at one time came from Russia. Now, with the war in Ukraine, that has dropped to about 25 percent.
What is to come of all of this?
The political events in Sweden and Italy are not happening in a vacuum. They are smaller pieces of a much larger, growing trend. Countries like Poland and Hungary have similarly drawn attention. Viktor Orbán, for example, was recently ridiculed for a speech decrying the “mixing of races.” Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, India’s Narendra Modi, and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines have all been characterized as right-wing populists and ridiculed for their controversial statements and policies.
This trend can be seen in other liberal democracies as well. Most notably in France, far-right figure Marine Le Pen came very close to defeating centrist President Macron. In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany Party is gaining strength. The Brexit vote in the UK also draws the connection to a growing right-wing movement. Even the U.S. is not free of this concerning predicament. While the U.S. government has long warned of the growing threat of domestic right-wing violence, the election of Donald Trump and his subsequent actions have emboldened far-right organizations around the globe.
What must be understood is that this phenomenon is strengthened by its increasingly connected and well-funded network of ideas and material organization – media, internet presence, etc. The irony goes without saying, given that most of these parties are inherently nationalistic. The messaging of different groups is becoming oddly similar as they feed off of one another. One of the mottos of the Sweden Democrats, “Make Sweden Great Again” is a direct nod to Trump in the U.S. Similarly, the battles of wokeness are translating outside of the U.S. as well. Underlying this development is the trifecta of economic discontent, increased migration, and the uncertainty created by an ever-changing international order. All of these lay the groundwork for an effective right-wing message.
Since the 1980s, economic inequality has risen in most countries, increasing financial precarity for many around the world. Making the situation worse, welfare state retrenchment has occurred throughout post-industrial countries. Likewise, labor union density and strength have weakened – virtually decimated in some places. Traditionally, labor unions have been a significant form of leftist organizing. In addition, globalization has become a politicized issue, with populists of all stripes courting its losers.
Conflict in many parts of the world, especially in the Middle East and North African region and now in Ukraine, has increased rates of immigration into Europe. The Civil War in Syria is a prime example of this. As climate change ravages parts of the globe, we are also beginning to witness its effects on migration patterns. Far-right nativism portrays this as straining state capacity for the homeland's people.
The landscape of international relations is changing in ways and at speeds that seemed impossible to many observers just a few decades ago. Some scholars even arrogantly proclaimed the end of history, ignoring blind spots and the whispers of history. The old world that had existed for decades, and which seemed statically permanent, is dying. What we are witnessing, the tension between this death and birth is the death rattles of one and the cries of another. The global order has shifted from a bipolar power structure (the U.S. and the USSR) to a unipolar structure with the U.S. at the helm, to one that could be described as multipolar, with many other countries vying for power and influence. With this shift, the dominance of the Western powers has been called into question. The meteoric rise of China and private capital entities further complicates this phenomenon. This, however, is not an endorsement of the necessity of an arrogant and hardline American dominance, but simply an acknowledgment of the global situation as it stands.
The trends on display within Europe are most certainly going to continue. Given the global economic outlook, climate and politically induced migration, and the uncertainty of the international system, the conditions contributing to the far-right’s rise are not going to change anytime soon. As protection against this rightward march, we must not delude ourselves about the durability of our institutions. It is indeed only by the sheer presence of those institutions that global conditions have not degraded more than they already have. But one has to wonder how long this can hold. The institutions that we hold so dear rest on a simple agreement. As long as the majority of people believe that they serve a justifiable purpose, then they will continue to have power. But the moment that trust in them is gone, so too is their power.
This is the true threat of the far-right. The objective is to shed so much doubt and sow so much discontent that people lose faith in the institutions that hold up our democratic system. The far-right may use democratic means, if necessary, to gain power, but their true alliance is not with democracy, it is with power and control. As long as economic inequality is allowed to exist and increase, the more ammunition the far-right will have to indict the system at large. They attempt to validate real economic fears, but instead of casting blame on the real reasons for that inequality, they choose the communal ‘other’, in whatever shape that comes.
The next few decades are sure to be difficult, with many dark days ahead. Our solace must come from the knowledge that humanity has faced the threat of far-right extremism before. Let history be our guide in these uncertain times and let us heed its warnings.