Wouter van de Klippe: Is there anything new about the current iteration of Europe’s far right? Are today’s right-wing populists different from the past? 

Daphne Halikiopoulou : First, I like to call them “far right” as opposed to “right-wing populists”. The term “populism” is broader and covers parties that are less extreme on the spectrum. I increasingly don’t use the term because I think it normalises the far right. For many people, “populism” sounds pseudo-democratic; it is for “the people”, and therefore it’s perceived as something good. 

That said, I don’t think that what Europe is facing is a new phenomenon. I know we’re all really worried now because far-right forces are doing well, but we should have been worried a long time ago. Remember, we saw the far right form a coalition government with the centre-right in Austria many years ago [in 2000]; we also saw Pim Fortuyn, a political predecessor of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, do very well in the early 2000s; Jean-Marie Le Pen made it to the second round [of the presidential election] in France in 2002. We’ve known for many years that there is an appetite for this kind of politics. What has changed is that first, these parties are now entering governments and making policy, and second, they’ve gained momentum and are more normalised. 

How did this normalisation happen? Does it have to do with Europe forgetting its troubling history with the far right? 

This shift did not happen overnight. It has been a trend for a long time. These parties have succeeded in changing how they present themselves. Now, in the majority of cases, they don’t blatantly espouse a form of ethnic nationalism that celebrates Hitler. Instead, they link their messaging to ideological clashes, such as cultural and economic threats.  

On the demand side, I think a lot of people vote for them for different reasons. Although I haven’t done research on younger generations forgetting Europe’s history, I think that matters too – it’s a hunch I have. When I express my concern about the far right to young people who are 18 or 20, they’re generally not worried. They reply, “Well, it’s okay, we need a strong man, right?” Younger people appear not to consider this as a real threat to democracy. 

In your work, you’ve argued that the idea that the far right is attractive primarily because of cultural factors is misguided. Could you explain why? 

The success of the far right is not exclusively, or even predominantly, about culture. This has been a narrative for years, but it’s dying now because I and many others have started to show through empirical research that this isn’t the case.  

There are many different types of insecurities that drive voters to the far right. If you look closely, you’ll see that those with cultural concerns are very likely to vote for the far right, but they’re very few people. On the contrary, what the far right has been very successful in doing is actively capitalising on all sorts of insecurities that largely originate from economic concerns.  

For example, there are many people convinced that immigrants are competitors in the labour market, that they’re taking away access to welfare, jobs, schooling, healthcare, etc. There are also many crises that are economic in nature. One example is the housing crisis, which is really driving voters. Finally, there’s the question of trust in institutions, and we see across Europe that there is a very strong correlation between declining levels of political trust and support for far-right parties. 

It’s the people who are suffering from these kinds of insecurities and lack of trust who constitute the majority of far-right voters, not those with predominantly cultural concerns. 

We’ve known for many years that there is an appetite for this kind of politics.

Far-right parties are falling over themselves to prove that they are the true parties of the working class, whereas historically they have been associated with bourgeois politics. Why are we seeing this shift, and why has it been effective? 

There hasn’t been much of a shift in terms of the voting base. For a very long time, there have been theories that indicate that it is blue-collar workers or unemployed people who support the far right. It’s the classic story of working-class men as the key supporters of these parties. In the early 2000s, theories looked at the “losers of globalisation”. Before that, it was the “losers of modernisation”. What is interesting, I think, is how much far-right parties themselves have shifted their own narratives to focus on these target groups.  

When you look at the transition from Jean-Marie Le Pen to his daughter Marine Le Pen as leader of the Front National [now Rassemblement National] in France, you see a clear shift towards welfare state politics. When it comes to Brexit, the appeal of the narrative “British jobs for British workers” and of the idea that immigrants were taking away jobs was visible in the “red wall” [the UK Parliament constituencies in the Midlands and northern England that have historically supported the Labour Party]. The modernisation of far-right narratives is a turn towards the welfare state – towards “welfare chauvinism”. 

Is this shift taking place all over Europe? 

There are variations. In the Netherlands, for example, the far right is still more or less on the economic right wing rather than in favour of a strong welfare state. In Eastern Europe, because of the communist past, a focus on welfare doesn’t sell, and it’s used only occasionally. Far-right rhetoric in Eastern Europe is more about policies that perpetuate the nation, such as measures encouraging families to have more children. 

Why hasn’t the Left’s messaging on the social welfare state been as effective? 

That’s the million-dollar question. My research is much more on looking at the far right than the Left, but I would highlight three things.  

First, the Left is on the defensive, and that means it’s going through a bit of an identity crisis. It is asking itself, “Should we be more on the far left? Should we be more mainstream? Should we emphasise ‘woke’ politics or economic concerns?” It’s like playing football and being on the other team’s turf, two nil down: all of the momentum is against you.  

Second, many left-wing parties have tried to copy the Right, albeit in a more palatable way. They start saying: “We appreciate that immigration is an issue, and we’ll deal with it in a more acceptable and ‘mainstream’ way.” This is really not an effective strategy, although I understand why parties do that: they think it will be a way to garner votes when elections are near. What this actually does, however, is increase the salience of issues that are “owned” by the far right. 

Third – and this brings us to green politics – I think that there are certain structural crises that do not favour the Left. For example, take the issue of climate change. Clearly, left-wing parties need to address this, but unfortunately, many environmental protection policies that the Left will want to advocate for will divide its electorate. For example, some will feel left behind if they live in a coal region or in areas that cannot financially cope with losing industries and may struggle to pay for the costs of environmental protection policies. 

What policies could progressive forces put forward to prevent this divide within their electorate? 

There are different strategies and solutions depending on countries and regions and the specific threats they face. For example, there are financial compensation policies that essentially indemnify those who may lose out from environmental measures. But at the same time, they need to talk proactively and positively – it’s not just about compensation, but also about preventing green policies from impacting people negatively in the first place. 

Such as policies that fall under the umbrella of the “just transition”. 

Exactly. There is some evidence that just transition strategies work better than compensation strategies, especially because compensation can often be very limited. Even if you offer a lot of compensation in terms of financial investment, people might not feel the effect of it on the ground. 

Far-right forces are very active and make regulations and legislation that undermine democratic institutions.

But the term “just transition” is not without issues. It often sounds rather elitist – as if there was a small group of people deciding for others what is and isn’t “just”. The concept can feel very abstract. What the population does feel is that suddenly you tell someone living in a rural area that they can’t take their car anymore because it’s too old, and now they have to make use of a bus that comes every six hours to go to the supermarket or pick up their kid from school. Tangibly, this is all they see and feel on the ground. 

Perhaps there are two separate questions: first, how do people actually feel on the ground, and second, are green measures communicated effectively? 

Last year, the EU adopted new fiscal rules that would result in several EU member states being forced to implement austerity measures. What political consequences could this have? 

It’s very good news for the far right and very bad news for the Left. Austerity really triggers votes for the far right. It is essentially a greenhouse creating the conditions to make insecurity grow among the general population. If the far right is all about forging successful coalitions among a broad range of insecure groups, by introducing more austerity, you allow them to broaden and strengthen these coalitions. 

In order to defeat the far right, you need to break its mobilisation capacity, and with austerity, that’s not going to happen.  

Some analysts argue that the best way to defeat the far right is to let it govern, so that people realise that it doesn’t solve the crises they’re experiencing. Is this an effective long-term strategy? 

I think this is a very dangerous strategy. Perhaps you can observe that in some countries the far right won and then lost. But it has become much more persistent as a political force. Look at the FPÖ in Austria: it was in a coalition government, then the government collapsed because of the Ibiza affair [a corruption scandal involving the FPÖ’s leadership in 2019], and now it won the elections. 

If the Left has allowed the far right to get into power, it also has the agency to get it out.

You see it in the UK as well. [The Eurosceptic right-wing populist party] UKIP was never electorally successful, but it was successful in terms of supplying a narrative. It was able to convince [then-Prime Minister David] Cameron to call the 2016 Brexit referendum, and this year Reform UK [a far-right party led by Nigel Farage, the former leader of UKIP] has five MPs in the House of Commons. I am very sceptical of this strategy. I don’t think that it deflates the far right in the long term at all. 

In addition, when they gain seats in parliament or are in power, far-right forces are very active and make regulations and legislation that undermine democratic institutions. This is not a theoretical point. Look at what is happening in Hungary [where Viktor Orbán has been in power since 2010]. If they are in government for four years, they are going to implement policies that are designed to outlast them, such as laws that endanger minorities or the position of women. Donald Trump is the perfect example of that – just look at the abortion laws in the US and their consequences. 

We should be very careful of what we wish for – there’s a lot of danger in allowing these parties to get stronger. 

Do you see any outliers – countries where the far right is being effectively outmanoeuvred? 

This is the really disappointing part, because if you had asked me 10 years ago, I would have pointed to Spain and Portugal. But now the answer is no, and this is a tragedy. I have trouble thinking of a single outlier now, and in fact, I’m now working on far-right forces beyond Europe, because we’re seeing them spring up like mushrooms in Latin America. 

What can be done to reverse this trend? 

As a political scientist, I tend to be better at explaining why things are the way they are rather than what we can do.  

But on a more positive and proactive note, I think that this is not a done deal. As I said earlier, there are structural insecurities that attract voters to the far right, but the far right is very much a supply-side phenomenon. In other words, it is powerful not because of the insecurities, but because it successfully capitalises on them, and because of what other parties have failed to do. 

If I’m correct, there is room for agency. If the Left has allowed the far right to get into power, it also has the agency to get it out. And the way that I think we do that is by not falling into the trap of copying the far right. There needs to be an ownership narrative. There are people who cannot afford to rent flats in Europe anymore – this is the next big crisis, and it is also a green issue, so we need parties who are truly able to address it.  

We also need to have parties that build a narrative on how they will deal with people’s insecurities properly rather than returning to austerity. Maybe the Greens and the Left have to come together with a narrative about who they are rather than what they’re fighting against.