The Echoes from Europe
Terry H. Schwadron
June 11, 2024
The broad strokes of the voting across 27 European nations for its legislature are shouting at us to pay attention.
The vote retained a centrist majority but saw widespread increases in votes for far-right nationalist parties, largely fueled by the same kind of anti-immigrant and economic discord that we see in the United States.
That rebellious, things-must-change dissonance came across stronger than the personalities, governing styles, or age of current European leaders — even calls to maintain democracy itself. The analysts tell usthat the results reflect deep trends of long-standing push by the Right, building since Britain’s Brexit vote to break from the EU.
The success of the Right in these elections in Europe parallels the divisive politics that we are experiencing and echoes the Joe Biden-Donald Trump match.
Margins in France were enough to force President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve the
National Assembly and call for new snap elections. Germany’s results weren’t terribly far behind France’s.
In its separate elections last week, the government in India suddenly found itself surviving only through a coalition with rivals — though that vote seemed to reflect more internal dissatisfaction over dictatorial trends of its leader. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will become yet more dependent on his right wing as Benny Gantz, seen as more moderate, departs his cabinet over disputes about Gaza policy.
However unique each result, the overall messaging seems similar. The various exit polls of voters tell us that lot of people in the world’s democracies are unhappy either discomfort and perceived sacrifices and want to blame migrants and the current leaders.
Though far-right parties did not win, they will push center-right policies more to towards their Right’s extreme ideas — much as we have seen formerly “moderate” Republicans more openly embrace MAGA ideas.
“There is a disproportionate sense of disappointment in our societies,” Thomas Bagger, the state secretary of the German Foreign Office, told the New York Times. “We lost our trust that we had figured out the long arc of history and that it bends toward democracy. Russia lost its idea of the future, and [President Vladimir] Putin turned to the past. We are in danger of falling into the same trap.”
Parallels In the U.S.
Progressives in this country are not reacting well to Biden’s executive orders restricting migrant crossing at the Southern border and caps on asylum requests. But the inevitable laws of playing politics shows that Biden needs to show just such a hand for his own survival — almost regardless of whether the moves are too little or too much for the nation and for legal scrutiny.
There are echoes of less-than-liberal adjustments about government spending, pressure to reduce prices on popular goods and interest rates, even in some matters touching business or environmental regulations and on foreign policy.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump and Republicans, from whom you might expect to see some easing of extreme positions toward the political Right, are simply doubling down on positions and an outlook that insist the nation is headed for the cliff.
Expect that these European votes will embolden our political Rightists to shout yet louder that Someone is to blame for high prices, American support for wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and an unending line of migrants who want to flood the U.S. The calls to dump “elites” who look to science or fact in favor of a “populism” dependent on individual experience.
Someone immediately points to migrants, but next aims at incumbent politicians on whose watch migrants increased and daily expenses and conditions appeared to worsen.
Expect, too, that our politics will get uglier yet. The debate scheduled later this month likely will only sharpen attacks and the sentencing hearing for Trump next month could well launch more outward clashes of word and deed.
Listen more closely, though, and you’ll hear the rallying cry that someone must pay for our perceived discomforts from prices and delayed dreams. Still, nothing about balancing migrant services and traffic accounts for calls to overturn rights or newfound demands to impose morality for some on all.
The only thing we did not hear from Europe was any antipathy for a singular figure to arrive and stomp on rights. The democratic vote was to allow dictatorship more light, so long as it puts salve on current perceived wounds.
Sound familiar?
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