Is Far-Right Extremism an Anomaly for Europeans, or Their True Identity?

T

he brief series of German state elections that began on September 6 and concluded on September 20 once again set off the alarm bells over the far right that have never truly fallen silent in Europe. The election results in Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin not only confirmed the rise of the far right but also pointed to the inevitable collapse of the centrist-liberal political model that has spread across Europe in successive waves.

Rising living costs across Europe, mounting inflation driven by higher energy prices amid intensifying conflicts around the Strait of Hormuz and in Ukraine, the MAGA winds blowing from the United States, and provocations by the Kremlin have combined to transform the continent. As a result, the European Union no longer resembles the “garden” described by Josep Borrell, then the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, in 2022. On the contrary, it is increasingly becoming the jungle itself.

Although there is a strong tendency to assess Europe’s current situation in terms of changing circumstances, one important historical fact should not be overlooked. At the Nuremberg trials before the International Military Tribunal, which began after the Second World War and concluded on October 1, 1946, only the upper echelons of Nazism were brought to justice.

If we include the Baltic countries and Ukraine, which were occupied by Germany during the war, there were groups of collaborators who embraced Nazi ideology in nearly 20 countries. Add to these Italy and Spain, which sided with Germany, and even the British Union of Fascists, which emerged in Britain under the leadership of Sir Oswald Mosley, and it becomes possible to argue that the far right’s electoral visibility today represents merely the tip of the iceberg.

Surely, all these people, their ideologies and their political traditions did not simply evaporate and disappear after the Second World War ended.

Moreover, under the pressure of circumstances and the perceived Soviet threat, the way was opened for former Nazis to take positions in politics and the military in the Federal Republic of Germany. The United States also brought prominent figures who had worked on Hitler’s weapons programs to American soil, recruiting them for its own purposes and employing them in the Apollo space program and operations organized by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Since the 1980s, political movements reorganised by these ideological currents have sought ways to come to power under different identities in France, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Although their electoral successes have so far been contained through coalitions between centrist and left-wing parties or through European Union sanctions, the rise of the far right has become increasingly difficult to prevent as Europe gradually ceases to be a society characterized by prosperity.

The economic crises generated by neoliberal policies originating in Britain and the United States since the 1980s have also provided the fuel for the present rise of Europe’s far right.

The Post-Second World War narrative has reached its end

The question that should now be asked is this: Is the far right Europe’s default setting? Could the European Union project, developed to reform Europeans’ racist and war-prone tendencies, have been rejected by the very societies it was intended to transform?

The longest period without war on European soil since the fall of the Western Roman Empire in AD 476 occurred after the Second World War. If we exclude the Soviet Union’s suppression of calls for freedom in Eastern Europe, this period of relative tranquillity lasted until 1991.

The civil war in Yugoslavia that began that year, followed by the genocide targeting Bosniaks, was not merely watched from the sidelines by Europe’s leading powers. Germany and France also became involved in the war and genocide by supporting Croats and Serbs in the hope of expanding their respective spheres of influence.

Germany and Italy achieved their present-day national unification only in the final quarter of the nineteenth century. In other words, the Europe we recognise within its contemporary borders has a history of only approximately 140 years. Apparently, in keeping with the nature of things, European peoples now wish to return to their roots.

In other words, the shrinking share of prosperity is reconnecting Europeans with what the author regards as their underlying regionalist and xenophobic identity.

The extent to which this assessment proves accurate will become apparent in April 2027.

Alongside elections scheduled for April 18 in the German states of Schleswig-Holstein and Saarland, and April 25 in North Rhine-Westphalia, the first round of France’s presidential election, planned for April 18, 2027, will provide a numerical measure of the momentum gained by far-right movements among European voters.

Opinion polls currently conducted in France indicate that the alliance models developed by centrist and left-wing parties over more than 40 years to block the far right are collapsing.

Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (Rassemblement National) currently leads with more than 35 percent of the vote. In a potential second round, Le Pen appears to lead her centre-right rival Édouard Philippe by 57 percent to 43 percent, while polling against a potential left-wing opponent, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, puts her ahead by 69 percent to 31 percent.

What would the simultaneous rise of the far right in Germany and France mean for the world, given that preventing these two countries from going to war with one another again was one of the fundamental reasons behind the creation of the European Union?

Would a political compass pointing towards the far right lead to the disintegration of the European Union, or could it produce an unpredictable outcome shaped by the circumstances of our age?

Could an alliance between the far-right movements of these two countries confront us with a more militaristic and aggressive conception of European unity?

Will Europe become the bait?

Given the trajectory of relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China, it would not be surprising for Europe’s far right to organise itself along these lines.

It is worth examining Chinese President Xi Jinping’s September 23 visit to the United States, his first in 11 years, from this perspective.

Xi bypassed the United Nations General Assembly and travelled directly to Washington, where the principal items on the leaders’ agenda were US arms sales to Taiwan and the development of artificial intelligence.

However, particular attention should be paid to the following statement made by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent immediately before the meeting:

“Today, we agreed to extend the period of economic détente between our two countries, which we call the ‘Busan Agreement’ and which was scheduled to expire on November 10. The agreement will be extended until January 10 to give us more time to explore what we can achieve in the economic sphere.”

This statement indicates that relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China are evolving towards the conditions of an “ideal Cold War”, even if they have not entered a period of complete détente.

As Washington and Beijing put their own relations back on track, Europe and Russia may be left to pay the price.

The geographical line along which a new Berlin Wall must be drawn, as required by the emerging bipolar world order, is shifting northwards towards the Black Sea.

Under these circumstances, Europe does not want to find itself on the menu at the negotiating table between Russia and the United States. Its shift towards the far right will therefore be inevitable, whatever the eventual outcome.

(Originally published in Turkish by Kriter)