European elections this month turbocharged media misuse of the term “far right.” Parties opposed to pan-European socialism made big gains, triggering alarmed reports about a “far right” threat.
These came from news outlets always ready to deprecate movements that appeal to voters who wish to protect their national cultures against attack by unlimited “progressivism.”
Google-search “European elections and far right,” and up pop headlines such as “…far right rocks European politics…” (Associated Press), “Battered by far right, Macron bets big…” (Washington Post), and “…give far right an acceptable face” (CNN). The “far right” rocks and batters things and needs a mask to seem acceptable. At least, that’s how news media tell it.
“Far right” and variants such as “hard right” and “extreme right” are merely insults thrown promiscuously by leftish politicians and media, conveying no more than that their target is disliked by the speaker or writer.
Journalists in Europe and America seem incapable of viewing politics other than through the antique lens of Allies versus Nazis, and they outlandishly imply similarities between our epoch and the decade before World War II.
They’re helped in framing stories this way by trace elements of ugly old fascism that cling to populist conservative parties in Europe. But these fringes neither control nor motivate right-wing agendas, which are well within the pale of polite political discussion.
Leftish journalists simply want to tar conservative causes with the radicalism of their fringes. Just as when U.K. citizens voted in 2016 to quit the European Union, a small minority was driven by racial xenophobia. So, the media depicted “leavers” generally as racist when, in truth, most wanted merely to restore national sovereignty, govern themselves, and stop being lorded over by foreign oligarchs.
In France today, the National Rally party of Marine Le Pen no longer advocates policies or has leadership that can legitimately be called racist. It wants to preserve French identity by stanching the flow of immigration, primarily from Muslim countries, that has radically altered the culture for the worse. It rejects multiculturalism and the soothing lie that “diversity,” which means a Balkanized society, is a source of strength. This is plain reason, and ordinary people agree.
National Rally is also for trade protectionism and government intervention, not market economics, and opposes nationalization of public industries. These are broadly socialist policies, not capitalist or far-right.
The party flirts with Russian President Vladimir Putin and opposes military aid to Ukraine, which suggests a hankering for authoritarian Soviet-style revanchism more than anything far-right. It’s more extreme left — you know, postcommunist.
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What we are seeing in Europe as in America is a trend among ordinary people against uncontrolled immigration from countries without strong governing institutions that suffer from profoundly unimpressive records on both liberal democracy and the rule of law. This antipathy to an alien influx is exacerbated by preaching from the domestic Left that Western culture is squalid, hypocritical, racist, and wrong.
It is none of those things, or at least no worse on any of them than anywhere else. And the achievements and civilization of the West are far superior to most. They should be sources of pride. To some they are. Traditional citizens of the West like their nations and their ways of life. They are voting to preserve them. That does not make them “far-right.”
