This Sunday, the Spaniards elect a new government. The tea leaves indicate the country will move to the right. In so doing, it will mirror a trend seen across much of Europe. Since WWII, the continent, at least in the West, had seen the rise of liberal (in the American sense) democracies. However, always lurking are the fascist, nationalist, and populist dreams that led to the rise of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and Vichy. Back then, even countries like the UK had supporters of right-wing extremists such as Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts.
In the 21st century, much of Europe has seen a re-emergence of the right. Not old-school laissez faire conservatism. But the angry, jingoistic, science-denying, socially intolerant absolutism of the modern-day reactionary. The one difference between the WWII era and today is that now there is little appetite for landgrabs — so there is a silver lining.
Also, in contrast to the US, God plays a lesser role, although religious intolerance is by no means absent.
Spain
Currently, the national government is a social-democratic coalition of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and Unidas Podemos. When today’s votes are counted, the polls suggest that the Popular Party (PP) will have the most seats in the Cortes Generales, the Spanish national legislature — but will fail to win an outright majority. As a center-right party, the PP’s natural coalition partner is Vox, the country’s 10-year-old right-wing, nationalist party.
Vox will likely drive a hard bargain in its role as kingmaker. And Spain will take a hard lurch into nationalistic conservatism. And will be closer to Francisco Franco’s philosophy than at any time since he died in 1975.
Italy
Italy is no stranger to right-wing governments. In this century alone, Silvio Berlusconi, leader of Forza Italia, a center-right party, was Prime Minister for eight years. This service is a remark longevity for an Italian political leader when you consider that since WWII, Italy has had 31 Prime Ministers — in contrast to the UK with 17.
Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s first female PM, is the incumbent. She, without irony, is the leader of the Brothers of Italy (FdI), a far-right, populist party with fascist roots. (Note: although she has been in power less than a year, she has already served longer than 11 Italian prime ministers — that is turnover)
Italy’s new far-right ethos is already starting to hurt people. Impelled by new legislation passed by the “traditional family-first” government, the city of Padua has begun removing the names of non-biological gay mothers from their children’s birth certificates. How that benefits the children is hard to see.
Germany
The poster child for C20th Western European fascism, Germany, has also seen an increase in support for the right — especially in what was East Germany during the Soviet era. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has grown in popularity as hard-right politicians have stoked Islamophobia and fear of immigrants — and they ice the hate cake with a healthy dose of Euroscepticism. Although the last is no longer the tool it was, now that the other EU members have seen what an economic disaster Brexit was for the UK.
AfD is now the third-strongest political party, only slightly behind Chancellor Olaf Scholz's center-left Social Democrats in second and the center-right CDU/CSU main opposition bloc in first. The next federal election, which has to occur before 26 October 2025, will show how strong AfD is nationally.
Germany, Italy, and Spain are similar in that one party rarely wins the majority of seats in the national legislature. As a result, even smaller parties can have more influence than their raw numbers would indicate. (See Israel)
Scandinavia
Americans of both parties tend to see the Scandinavian countries as left-wing havens — although Republicans view them as a socialist sinkhole, while Democrats see them as a progressive paradise. However, there are plenty of conservatives, nationalists, xenophobes, and the generally disgruntled who call the region home.
In Sweden, the Sweden Democrats, which despite its name is right-wing, is the second largest party. And because of a power-sharing agreement with the liberal-conservative Moderate party., they are currently in charge. The group has claimed to have expelled its most reactionary elements. However, they are still anti-immigrant, nationalist, and Islamaphobic. If you have read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, you will know some of the Swedes’ neoNazi sympathies.
Finland, already the most conservative country in the Scandinavian block, took a sharp right turn in the 2023 general election. The nationalist Finns Party, which only started to make a mark in 2011, fell just short of winning a plurality. Regardless, they are now part of the governing coalition, driving policy.
Eastern Europe
Unlike Westerners, Eastern Europeans have a much shorter democratic tradition. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, many of the old Soviet Republics have not strayed far from the autocratic fold.
Hungary
The country has been dominated since 2010 by Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz party. In 2011, Orbán’s government enacted a new constitution, which includes support for so-called traditional values, nationalism, Christianity, and electoral ‘reform’.
Orbán’s time in power has been underpinned by anti-immigrant xenophobia and Euroskepticism. His power — widely considered already autocratic — was enhanced in 2020, when the parliament passed a law creating an unlimited state of emergency, granting the prime minister the ability to rule by decree. If the reader sees similarities between that and the 1933 Enabling Act in Nazi Germany, so be it.
Poland
Mateusz Morawiecki, who shares much of Orbán’s philosophy, has been Poland’s Prime Minister since 2017. Backed by the misleadingly named Law and Justice Party (PiS), he has directed the country down a similar nationalistic populist path as traveled by Hungary.
He has drawn condemnation from Israel for antisemitic remarks about anti-government protestors, and he has shown a taste for revisionist WWII history absolving Poland from war crimes while pointing the finger at other countries. However, breaking with Hungary, he has supported Ukraine against Russia.
Bright spots
The United Kingdom
The country has suffered under Conservative Party leadership since 2010. The current PM, Rishi Sunak, is the latest — and in all likely last — in a series of five dismally incompetent Tory heads of government. Right-wing success in Britain rested in large part on appeals to ‘sovereignty’, which led to one of history’s worst political own goals, Brexit. A decision so massively stupid that it will take the UK decades to recover — if it ever does.
Under the petulant leadership of the underwhelming Jeremy Corbin, the thoroughly incompetent Labour Party contributed to the disaster by providing no viable opposition to Conservative adventurism.
However, unless there is a tsunamic shift in public opinion, the Torys will be gone in the next general election, which must occur by the fall of 2024.
France
Despite the rise of the far-right National Rally (RN) whose Presidential candidate, Marine LePen reached the final round of the last two national elections, the French have stuck with the centrist Emanuel Macron and his Renaissance (RE) party. Although Macron’s attempted economic reforms have driven the population to the streets (which is typical for the French).
Whether this strengthens the far right’s hand or improves the fortune of France's traditional left-wing parties will be revealed in the 2027 presidential election.
Conclusion
Europe is not the US. Most countries have multiple political parties that need to build coalitions to attain and hold power — and politics does make for strange bedfellows. Being right-wing means different things in different countries. And as said above, religion plays a lesser role in European politics — in some countries, it plays none.
The European Union also plays a modifying role. All members of the EU have to pay heed to the organization's regulations on civil rights, et al. And because of Brexit, there is less appetite to swallow the bitter pill of leaving.
So where the continent will be in a decade is anybody’s guess.
Note
It is impossible, and possibly ridiculous, to try and give anything more than the most gossamer and superficial treatment of European politics in one essay. So this diary is merely to give a flavor to the place without any pretense of completeness.