SEC

ASSIGNMENT

SUBMITTED BY:
SONALI THONGRAM
B.A. Economics(Honours)
Roll no:22/080
Topic: The recent rise of right wing politics in
Europe
Content
 History of the term
 What is right wing politics?
 Stages of the Right throughout history
 History of right wing politics in Europe
( France and Hungary)
 Causes of the rise of the Right in Europe
 Case study 1- Hungary
 Case study 2- Poland
 Case study 3- Italy
 So…A Far Right Surge unavoidable for
Europe?
 Bibliography
History of the term

The political term Right were first used in the

18th century, during the French Revolution, in
reference to the seating arrangement of
the French parliament. Those who sat to the
right of the chair of the presiding officer were
generally supportive of the institutions of
the monarchist Old Regime. The original
"Right" in France was formed in reaction to
the "Left" and comprised those supporting
hierarchy, tradition, and clericalism. The
expression la droite ("the right") increased in
use after the restoration of the monarchy in
1815,

What is right wing politics?

Right-wing politics describes the range of political
ideologies that view certain social
orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or
desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis
of natural
law, economics, authority, property or tradition.
Hierarchy and inequality may be seen as natural results
of traditional social differences or competition in market
economies.
Right-wing politics involves, in varying degrees, the
rejection of some egalitarian objectives of left-wing
politics, claiming either that social or economic
inequality is natural and inevitable or that it is beneficial
to society. Right-wing ideologies and movements
support social order. The original French right-wing was
called "the party of order" and held that France needed
a strong political leader to keep order.
Conservative British scholar R. J. White, who rejects
egalitarianism, wrote: "Men are equal before God and
the laws, but unequal in all else; hierarchy is the order of
nature, and privilege is the reward of honourable
service". American conservative Russell Kirk also
rejected egalitarianism as imposing sameness, stating:
"Men are created different; and a government that
ignores this law becomes an unjust government for it
sacrifices nobility to mediocrity".[

Stages of the Right throughout history

According to The Cambridge History of Twentieth-
Century Political Thought, the Right has gone
through five distinct historical stages:
1.The reactionary right sought a return
to aristocracy and established religion.
2.The moderate right distrusted intellectuals
and sought limited government.
3.The radical right favored a romantic and
aggressive form of nationalism.
4.The extreme right proposed anti-
immigration policies and implicit racism.
5.The neo-liberal right sought to combine a
market economy and economic
deregulation with the traditional right-wing
beliefs in patriotism, elitism and law and
order.
History of Right wing politics in Europe

1.France

The political term right-wing was first used during

the French Revolution, when liberal deputies of the Third
Estate generally sat to the left of the presiding officer's
chair, a custom that began in the Estates General of
1789. The nobility, members of the Second Estate,
generally sat to the right. In the successive legislative
assemblies, monarchists who supported the Old
Regime were commonly referred to as rightists because
they sat on the right side. A major figure on the right
was Joseph de Maistre, who argued for
an authoritarian form of conservatism.
The centre-right Gaullists in post-World War II France
advocated considerable social spending on education
and infrastructure development as well as extensive
economic regulation, but limited the wealth redistribution
measures characteristic of social democracy.

2.Hungary
Between 1919 and 1944 Hungary was a rightist country.
Forged out of a counter-revolutionary heritage, its
governments advocated a "nationalist Christian" policy;
they extolled heroism, faith, and unity; they despised the
French Revolution, and they spurned the liberal and
socialist ideologies of the 19th century. The
governments saw Hungary as a bulwark
against bolshevism and bolshevism’s
instruments: socialism, cosmopolitanism,
and Freemasonry. They perpetrated the rule of a small
clique of aristocrats, civil servants, and army officers,
and surrounded with adulation the head of the state, the
counterrevolutionary Admiral Horthy.

Causes of the rise of the Right in Europe

While there are multiple economic, social, cultural and political causes
for the current rise in the radical right in various European countries, it
is difficult to say which is the most important. Certainly, the economic
crisis triggered in 2008 and the ensuing single-minded pursuit by EU
and national authorities of neoliberal deficit-control and austerity
measures are one key factor. Such economic policies increase the
gap between the privileged élite and the brunt of the population and
thus offer the far right opportunities to harness the dissatisfaction of
those who have been left behind. The situation is compounded by
social changes that have shrunk the former industrial working class,
which had traditionally supported classic left-wing parties. Cultural
changes and, in particular, the crisis of the great ideologies (especially
on the left, with its transformational aspirations) have led to the spread
of individualist, divisive and cynical views of reality throughout society.

However, perhaps the best explanation can be found in the crisis of

democracy, which today, more than ever before, seems incapable of
fulfilling its theoretical promise. Conventional democratic politics has
adapted itself to (one might even say, given in to) the interests of high
finance; thus, the alternation between centre-right and centre-left
governments offers no real alternatives in terms of economic models,
but rather subtle variations on a single immutable pattern that seems
to strip representative institutions of meaning and reduce pluralist
elections to mere empty rituals. As a result, the far right benefits from
popular disgust with a corrupt, privileged and oligopolistic political
class, even as actual democracy seems powerless in the face of the
untouchable large economic and financial corporations. In this regard,
establishment parties are regularly accused of not representing the
true people; in opposition to this, and to representative institutions as
a whole, the far right calls for direct political participation and for
placing trust in more or less “charismatic” leaders able to connect with
the people without intermediaries. The old “political class” is written off
en masse (regardless of whether the conventional left or conventional
right is in power) for its partisan cronyism and inability to solve social
problems.

Case study 1
Hungary
Fidesz( the ruling party in Hungary) leader Victor Orban is
the hero of the European and US far right alike, hailed as the
protector of Christianity, European culture, and the
traditional family. Orbán’s story is in many ways a
microcosm of a two-way dynamic — the radicalization of the
mainstream right, as well as the mainstreaming of the far
right — that is threatening many European countries today.
After disappointing elections in 1990 and 1994, Orbán
transformed Fidesz into a conservative party, winning the
1998 elections. Although his first coalition government was
not especially alarming, his authoritarianism and
nationalism were already on display in those early years. His
response to his loss of power in 2002, when he declared that
“the nation cannot be in opposition,” and his support for
violent anti-government protests in 2006, should have been
clear red flags, but were mostly ignored.

Fidesz used the time in opposition to build so-called “civic

circles” and non-government organizations (including media
outlets), which functioned as a state within the state. After
coming back to power in 2010, Orbán used this
infrastructure, and the party’s constitutional majority, to
quickly implement a well-designed transformation of the political
system, including a new constitution, a replacement of most
key state personnel, and myriad new, Fidesz-controlled, semi-state
institutions, which now control and own almost all Hungarian
media outlets and many universities.

Fidesz had returned to power with a fairly vague pro-change

message and initially implemented a relatively mainstream,
if openly nationalist, conservative agenda. Although the
government claimed to support a free market, it used state
funds to buy up foreign-owned companies and industries and
build a “national capitalist class,” which is deeply loyal to Fidesz
and Orbán. At the same time, the government passed
socially conservative policies in ostensible defense of the
nationalist trifecta of church, family, and nation.

During the refugee crisis of 2015-16, Orbán shifted to a more

aggressive and openly nativist agenda. Not only did his
government build a high-tech border fence to keep immigrants
— especially Muslim immigrants — out of the country, it also
introduced a variety of socio-economic “pro-family” policies,
like tax breaks for families, in a bid to reverse Hungary’s
notoriously low birth rates and prevent the country from
becoming dependent upon non-European immigrants.
Although Hungary is no longer a liberal democracy — the
European Parliament has declared the country an “electoral
autocracy” — and elections are free but unfair, Orbán and
Fidesz are popular. In particular, his anti-immigration and
“pro-family” policies have broad support, as do government
investments in rural areas. However, he is also helped by a
hopelessly divided opposition and complete control of the
media, which provide a distorted view of the international
and national opposition, while staying quiet on the massive
corruption of the Orbàn regime.

Case Study 2
Poland
The story of Poland is similar to that of Hungary, but less
pronounced — so far. The current ruling party, Law and
Justice (PiS), has its roots in anti-communist opposition and
moved from the center to the far right over two decades.

Its first coalition government (2005-07) did raise some

alarms, although mostly because of its coalition partners,
the agrarian populist Samoobrona and, particularly, the
radical right League of Polish Families (LPR). Both parties
were openly nationalist and populist, and even faced
accusations of antisemitism.

When PiS returned to power in 2015, it promised to

implement “the Budapest model” in Warsaw, a nod to Orban’s
platform.

Like Fidesz in Hungary, PiS has turned the state media into
an instrument for party propaganda and attacked the
independent judiciary. It has also combined a socio-
economic agenda that includes generous subsidies for
larger families and rural communities, but it has not (yet)
tried to create a Fidesz-style “national capitalist class.”
Culturally, PiS staunchly defends the so-called “traditional
family” and opposes LGBTQ rights, often in close
collaboration with the Catholic Church.

In terms of foreign policy, the differences between the two

parties are much bigger. PiS is more fundamentally
Euroskeptic, because of a deep-seated anti-German attitude,
and is more staunchly pro-US and anti-Russian. And PiS
leader Jarosław Kaczyński is almost the opposite of Viktor
Orbán, being more a behind-the-scenes power broker and
showing little interest in becoming a major European player.

Partly because PiS is the leading party of the European

Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), the Euroskeptic group
founded by the British Conservative Party, its crude attacks
on liberal democracy have faced significantly more backlash
from the EU. The party also faces much stronger opposition
from both civil society and political parties in Poland, at
least compared to Fidesz in Hungary. This became
particularly visible in 2020, when the government further
tightened its abortion ban, already the second strictest in
the EU (after Malta), and over 100,000 Polish women flooded
the streets of Warsaw in protest.

Polish liberal democracy has been weakened by seven years

of PiS rule, but recent events suggest it is still alive and
kicking back.
Case study 3
Italy
Italy has had consistent far-right parliamentary
representation in the postwar era, but it was Silvio
Berlusconi — prime minister in 1994, 2001-06, and 2008-11
— who moved the far right out of the margins, creating a
center-right bloc with the post-fascists of the National
Alliance (AN) and the regional populists of the Northern
League (LN) in 1994.

For 20 years, his Forza Italia (FI) dominated that bloc, a

coalition that was defined more by Berlusconi’s personal
interests, as well as a vocal critique of the left (including the
“red robes,” judges overseeing various corruption cases
against the prime minister), than by any specific ideological
or policy platform. But in 2018 Matteo Salvini’s radicalized
Lega became the biggest right-wing party — only to lose that
position to Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (FdI) in 2022.

Meloni is both the first female prime minister of Italy and the
first far-right prime minister of a Western European country
in the postwar era. But her power base is much weaker than
her allies in Hungary and Poland. There are more profound
ideological differences within Italy’s coalition. For instance,
while the League originated as a regionalist party for the
North, at times even calling for independence from Italy, FdI
supports a strongly unitary Italian state. And where FdI and
the League are both strongly Euroskeptic, Berlusconi has
presented himself more recently as one of the strongest EU
supporters within the country.

Competing egos and mutual distrust threaten the coalition

even more. Neither Berlusconi nor Salvini will accept a
secondary role, let alone to a woman, and will not support a
power grab by Meloni. For instance, during the coalition
negotiations Berlusconi accused Meloni of being “bossy” (a
highly gendered accusation), while Meloni has accused
Salvini of being “more polemical” with her than with his
opponents.

Italy’s judiciary also has a long history of fighting political

interference from the right, most notably Berlusconi. So,
while the Italian far right is in power and worth keeping an
eye on, it is doubtful it can do similar damage to the
institutions and values of liberal democracy as its
ideological brethren to the East.

So…Is a far right surge unavoidable for Europe?

‘I don't think so’
“It's true that right-wing populists have done well in a few
countries,” said Brett Meyer, a research fellow at the Tony Blair
Institute for Global Change. “But not in most others".

“Look at Germany, they elected the most boring guy in the

world”, he added, citing other electoral victories of centrists in
France and Austria. “There is a big question mark over the
resurgence of populism”.
Meyer was also sceptical about drawing Europe-wide
comparisons, pointing out how recent elections in Italy and
Sweden were “completely different from one another”.

In Sweden, the vote was dominated by fears over crime and

migration, while Meyer says in Italy the "story was more about
the weakness and fragmentation of the left”.

Sweden’s left-leaning Social Democrats won the popular vote,

yet could not form a governing coalition, while in Italy the left-
wing parties failed to form a pre-election agreement in contrast
to the right.

Yet there was one thing that united Europe’s right-wing

populists, according to Meyer.

“If I had to summarise them all up, I would say they are anti-
immigrant parties”, he said. “They have all done well in
countries where immigration is a salient issue”.

Bibliography

 Vox.com
 Wikipedia
 The guardian
 Euronews.com
 IEMed