(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Farage, Le Pen, Meloni: Europe’s establishment is ushering in the far right [1] [] Date: 2024-06 Rishi Sunak’s decision to leave D-Day celebrations early to attend an ITV interview will likely be remembered as the worst blunder of this year’s UK general election campaign. But the British media’s coverage of the Normandy ceremony missed the main story: that while heads of state gathered to celebrate the end of fascism in Europe, the heirs of Mussolini and Pétin were among them, honoured as respectable statespeople. On her social media, Marine Le Pen paid tribute to those who “made the ultimate sacrifice to restore our freedom”. Four days later, her far-right National Rally topped the polls in France’s elections to the European Parliament, prompting president Emmanuel Macron to call a snap election, which National Rally looks set to win. Le Pen’s success is emblematic of a new phase in the development of the European far right, which has been audacious in divorcing itself from the memory of fascism. Having created the conditions for the new far right’s rise, and adopted its political agendas, a section of Europe's political elites are now moving to form alliances with it. Italy’s ruling Brothers of Italy party, for example, is the direct inheritor of the Italian fascist tradition. It has used the state to undermine press freedom and is now attempting to pass constitutional reforms to allow populist politicians to concentrate power. Its proposals would mean the party that wins the most votes automatically receives at least 55% of Parliament’s seats, even if its actual share of the national vote is far lower. Prime ministers would be directly elected for five years, a change from the current system in which their terms end when they resign or Parliament withdraws its confidence in them. Get our free Daily Email Get one whole story, direct to your inbox every weekday. Sign up now The party’s leader, prime minister Georgia Meloni, who openly praised Mussolini in her youth, solemnly laid a wreath at Italy’s annual Liberation Day proceedings on 25 April. The international media barely mentions her fascist roots. In the UK, the Reform Party, like the hard-right wing of the Conservatives now coalescing around Suella Braverman, lacks such a direct connection to the far-right projects of the early 20th century. This fact makes its leader, Nigel Farage, dangerous. When he attends D-Day celebrations, no one questions which side he would have been on, even if he reportedly sang Hitler Youth songs while at school (an allegation that he has denied). Reform’s candidate for Bexhill and Battle, meanwhile, has argued that Britain should have “taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality”, which a spokesperson for the party said was not an “endorsement”. Having elevated Farage’s profile, the British media now seems addicted to the churn of political drama and stories he provides. Scrutiny is secondary. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s key message in the wake of the European Parliament elections earlier this month was: “The centre is holding”. No doubt she believed the EU needed to project confidence and stability as the war in Ukraine reaches a pivotal stage, but what she displayed was willful complacency. Though the parties of the centre-left, centre and centre-right do have a majority between them, the nationalist right is now one of the largest blocs. Le Pen’s group, Identity and Democracy, has only 58 of 720 seats, but the European Conservatives and Reformists – a bloc that includes Meloni’s party, as well as the main far-right initiatives of Spain, Sweden and others – adds 76. A big majority of the 45 non-inscrits, who do not belong to any political grouping, are from far-right parties. As the far right wriggles free of the collective memory of the 20th century, the political establishment in France and Germany has loosened the cordon sanitaire. Éric Ciotti, the leader of France’s centre-right Republicans, has called for an electoral alliance with National Rally ahead of the French legislative elections, while French business now openly courts Le Pen. Since being elected as the leader of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in 2022, Friedrich Merz has moved the party to the right. Last year, he began to broach the possibility of cooperation between the CDU and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party at a local level. The AfD came second in the European elections, despite the expulsion of its lead candidate, Maximilian Krah, who stated that he would “never say that anyone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal”. The story is the same in Brussels itself. Rather than exclude the far right, von der Leyen thinks she can bring them in. In the Spitzenkandidat debates prior to the European elections, she was quite open that she might work with Meloni to secure her re-election as Commission President later this year. She has reportedly even delayed the publication of the EU’s annual Rule of Law report, which was expected to be approved on 3 July, because it is likely to criticise the Italian government’s attacks on press freedom. Formal pacts between the political establishment and the far right are just the next phase of a long political accommodation. The immigration debate has been dragged into previously uncharted territory with the approval of nominally liberal and centre-left leaders. At the end of last year, Macron pushed through a raft of aggressive anti-migrant policies, aimed at speeding up deportations, making family reunions harder and discriminating against non-citizens in welfare provision. His own party rebelled and his health minister resigned, but the legislation passed with the support of National Rally. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who leads a coalition government of social democrats, greens and free-market liberals, has championed a ramping up of deportations and restrictions to benefits for asylum seekers. In the UK, Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, who is expected to become prime minister after next week’s election, has said he will not implement the government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, but would not say if he would stop using the Bibby Stockholm barge to house asylum seekers. Refugee charities have warned about the deteriorating mental health of those being held on board, with one man dying in a reported suicide in December, while former employees on the barge have spoken of asylum seekers on board having to endure rancid food, bed bugs and flooding. In government, Labour says it will work to strengthen the post-Brexit border regime assembled by former Conservative home secretaries Priti Patel and Suella Braverman. The class that runs our political institutions, in Brussels and in Westminster, is fond of telling us that there is no alternative. Once, there was no alternative to the onward march of deregulation. Now, there is no alternative but to vote for them – or else. Progressives are offered a future in which they must cower behind the centre to defeat the nationalist right. All the while, the centre apes the far right’s rhetoric, adopts its policies, and co-opts its more respectable leaders. Europe’s leaders may salute the historical defeat of fascism, but they seem committed to repeating the mistakes of the past. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/le-pen-farage-meloni-far-right-rise-europe-von-de-leyen-france-italy-uk-germany-fascism/ Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/