Headless Counterrevolution
The mass entry of asylum seekers has fueled political change in Europe. The legitimacy of European institutions is now openly questioned. New “independence,” “populist,” and “rebel” parties challenge the traditional parties. The great power that came from the de facto alliance between Christian Democrats and Social Democrats—the configuration that has dominated European politics for three generations—is draining away. Though the Socialists have suffered the greatest electoral defeats, the Christian Democrats have endured serious losses as well. It is not clear that either movement has a future.
Germany offers clear indications. Christian Democrats have remained solidly entrenched in German politics for nearly seventy years. On September 24, 2017, however, they dropped to 32.9 percent (from 41.5 percent in the 2013 election). The Social Democrats, their pseudo-rivals and actual allies, fell to 20.5 percent. Small parties—the Liberals, the Left Party, the Greens—garnered 8 to 10 percent each, totaling 28.8 percent of the vote. But a new right-wing populist party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), defined solely by its opposition to immigration, bypassed these small parties. It rose from 4.7 percent with no seats in the Bundestag in 2013 to 12.6 percent and 94 seats. Two years later, in the European Parliament election of 2019, CDU/CSU fell again to 28.9 percent, and SPD to 15.8 percent, while the Greens rose to 20.5 percent and AfD reached 11 percent.
In France, socialist president François Hollande observed in a book published in 2016 that one year after the Paris Bataclan massacres, immigration was leading to a “partitioned country.” A few months later, in the presidential election of April 2017, Hollande’s successor, the socialist candidate Benoît Hamon, only received 6.3 percent of the vote. The right-wing populist Marine Le Pen won 21.3 percent, and the left-wing populist Mélenchon 19.58 percent. Fillon, the conservative candidate, garnered 20 percent, in spite of rumors of corruption. The real winner, though, was Macron, with 24 percent. An establishment man who presents himself as an outsider, Macron easily won the second presidential round against Le Pen, with 66 percent of the vote.
Two years later, however, Macron was almost toppled by the Yellow Vests protests, an unprecedented wave of urban and rural riots around the country. Protracted strikes followed in the winter of 2019. Clearly, populist France’s anger was not over. In the European election of 2019, Le Pen’s National Front, rebranded the National Rally, came in first with 23.34 percent of vote, followed by LREM, Macron’s party, with 22.42 percent. Conservatives fell to 8.48 percent, Socialists to 6.19 percent.
In Italy, the left-wing populist Five Star Movement achieved a spectacular victory on March 4, 2018, with 32.66 percent of the vote. The League, a more conservative populist party, won 17.35 percent, followed by two far right parties, Brothers of Italy and Us For Italy, which together garnered 5.65 percent. The populist and anti-establishment total was thus a stunning 55.68 percent. In the 2019 European Parliament elections, 34.26 percent went for the League and 17.06 percent for Five Star. This result prompted the latter group to enter into a coalition with the center-left democratic party. More political turmoil is expected in Italy as right-wing populism grows and establishment forces try to keep it out of power.
In Spain, the Popular Party was not so much defeated by the socialists in 2017 and 2019 as weakened by its own concessions to the left, leading to the departure of its most conservative constituency, which now votes for the Vox party. In the general election of November 2019, the socialists won 28 percent of the vote but were bypassed by the combined Popular and Vox total of 35.9 percent of the popular vote. In practical terms, however, the conservative vote did not lead to a parliamentary majority, as Vox has been deemed “far right” and kept out of power.
Populist parties are on the upswing in the Netherlands, various parts of Belgium, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, and Norway. At the same time, “national identity” parties have consolidated power in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria.
Some note that Western democratic Europe is clashing with the formerly Soviet-dominated, non-democratic Europe. Others speak of the affluent “core” Europe versus the poor “peripheral” Europe. These are real divisions, but they are not the essential political reality at present. Populists and those rebelling against the E.U.—an emblem of the power-sharing alliance of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats that has dominated for a long time—succeeded in seizing power in the U.K., the Western democracy par excellence. The same has happened in Italy, a founding member of the E.U. In Italy, moreover, the right-wing populist League got its highest returns in the “core” and affluent North, rather than in the “peripheral” and poor South. Even in France, Macron presents himself as a rebel of sorts. There can be no doubt: Europe’s postwar (and post-1989) political configurations are being swept away. The continent is looking for new ways and paradigms.