Social Europe: Understanding the far-right populists: focus on their political message

On the contrary, to understand the rise of far-right populism we must recognise the importance of supply—the ways in which the populists themselves attempt to make their message more appealing to broader sectors of the population. The implications are of paramount importance: instead of co-opting or imitating far-right populists under the false assumption that their success simply mirrors the ‘will of the people’, we should understand how the parties themselves are shaping popular demand. At the same time, we must also recognise their weaknesses—their ideological diversity and constraining nationalism, which in many ways account for their fluctuating electoral support and difficulty in forging successful transnational alliances. [...]

What makes far-right populist parties successful is precisely their nationalist message—more specifically, the ways in which they justify the exclusion of the outgroup. This is no longer in terms of ascriptive or organic criteria (as deployed by fascist or conventional extreme-right parties) but rather is done through civic distinctions—seeking to exclude those who supposedly do not espouse ‘our’ values of democracy and tolerance. Through this civic-nationalist narrative, far-right populists normalise exclusion: they offer solutions to voters’ multiple insecurities by using a rhetoric that excludes a variety of population groups on the basis that they are a purported threat to society’s value consensus, and hence to stability and prosperity. [...]

Despite the publicity which Salvini’s new alliance has attracted, unity in the European Parliament is thus not a straightforward endeavour. Currently far-right populists are spread across three groupings—Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy, European Conservatives and Reformists and Europe of Nations and Freedom—and some are unaffiliated. A number of the latter are likely to remain so because of their extremism, such as the Greek Golden Dawn, a blatantly Nazi organisation. Others belonging to the more moderate conservative groups won’t want to join Salvini’s coalition because they don’t want to be branded as far-right. Despite, therefore, the strategic necessity to unite, at core the ideologically nationalist predisposition of far-right populists makes international alliances difficult by definition. [...]

The problem is not only these parties’ electoral gains—which vary across country and time—but also the increasing consensus that to defeat them we must imitate them. This is deeply problematic. Those opposed to far-right populists need to understand this new winning formula and recognise their own ability, as well as responsibility, to frame an effective alternative political narrative, rather than sanitise the populists.

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Politico: Social Democrats in front as Finland heads to the polls

The campaign has in many ways been a traditional right-left battle. The Social Democrats have sought to portray themselves as reliable custodians of Finland’s extensive welfare state, making clear they are willing to raise taxes to maintain public services. [...]

Rinne's fortunes contrast with those of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä, whose attempts at cost-cutting and privatization foundered amid a public outcry and stiff opposition in parliament. In March, Sipilä, leader of the Center Party, resigned after abandoning plans for an overhaul of social welfare and health care. He stayed on as PM in a caretaker capacity. [...]

If the Social Democrats do win, it's not clear whom they would team up with to form a government. The smaller Greens and the Left Party are likely allies, or the Social Democrats could choose either the Center Party or the NCP, according to analysts. [...]

A win for the Social Democrats would be a rare event in Europe, as center-left parties have faced a steep decline in polls in many countries across the bloc. If Rinne becomes prime minister he would be following in the footsteps of fellow ex-union leader Stefan Löfven, who secured a second term as prime minister in neighboring Sweden earlier this year.

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Jacobin Magazine: Where Next for Finland’s Welfare State?

That’s something with which we’re struggling. The welfare state is a good concept and still retains widespread support among Finns. We represent a certain continuity in terms of these structures but understand that change is needed because they are under attack. One thing that separates Finland from Sweden is that we had a lot of influential autonomist-leftist debates in the mid-2000s which impacted policy and thinking in the Left Alliance. I come from that scene — as do many others — in the squatters’ movement and the politics of urban space.  [...]

We propose to put it at a level where people feel empowered to refuse bad jobs. The social democrats believe they can end all precarious work by introducing new laws. We’re saying no, entrepreneurship and self-employment are here to say. People want to do it and it’s also something that brings with it a freedom to be your own boss. What worker does not want to be their own boss? Instead of saying that we need to reverse all these changes we’ve seen in the labor market through new laws, we need a welfare structure that isn’t based on two categories: employed and unemployed. Basic income concerns the whole employment system. [...]

Another example is the so-called sharing economy, which is really more like a renting economy. It’s possible to imagine how these platforms could be run collectively in a way that resembles the traditional socialist concept of co-ownership of the means of productions. We should also look at data. If instead of it being hoarded by large corporations all the data we produce in society were open assets, it would provide a base for innovation which would be radically different compared to an economy with a few private actors owning patents. If data was owned collectively, it would be a great equalizer. Then there is the rapidly occurring automatization of industrial labor. We could respond to that by taxing the robots, creating a universal basic income and moving to a six-hour work day. This is an optimist view of the future — but we need to start thinking that way if we want to avoid the worst outcome. [...]

It should be remembered that the party differs from other populist-right forces in its origins. Unlike, say, the Swedish Democrats and the Front National, it began as an agrarian party with migration playing a relatively minor role. Its rhetoric was much more traditional populism — the ordinary man against the elites, particularly against the EU. In the mid-2000s anti-immigrant, right-wing groups in Finland were looking to come together and saw the potential of the True Finns as a vehicle. The party that rose to prominence was founded on this mix of xenophobic, migration-focused politicians and an agrarian populist base. 2011 was their big breakthrough and research suggests a broad range of sentiments about change propelled them. They said they were outside of politics, with the regular people, rhetoric you can even find in more centrist figures like Macron in France. So it wasn’t some kind of pure anti-immigrant vote.  

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FiveThirtyEight: Donald Trump Is Making Europe Liberal Again

The beneficiaries of the right-wing decline have variously been politicians on the left (such as Austria’s Van der Bellen2), the center-left (such as France’s Emmanuel Macron) and the center-right (such as Germany’s Angela Merkel, whose Christian Democratic Union has rebounded in polls). But there’s been another pattern in who gains or loses support: The warmer a candidate’s relationship with Trump, the worse he or she has tended to do. [...]

So if you’re keeping score at home, right-wing nationalist parties have had disappointing results in Austria, the Netherlands, France and the U.K., and they appear poised for one in Germany, although there’s a long way to go there. I haven’t cherry-picked these outcomes; these are the the major elections in Western Europe this year. If you want to get more obscure, the nationalist Finns Party underperformed its polls and lost a significant number of seats in the Finnish municipal elections in April, while the United Patriots, a coalition of nationalist parties, lost three seats in the Bulgarian parliamentary elections in March.

Despite the differences in electoral systems from country to country — and the quirky nature of some of the contests, such as in France — it’s been a remarkably consistent pattern. The nationalist party fades as the election heats up and it begins to receive more scrutiny. Then it further underperforms its polls on election day, sometimes by several percentage points. [...]

While there’s no smoking gun to attribute this shift to Trump, there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence. The timing lines up well: European right-wing parties had generally been gaining ground in elections until late last year; now we suddenly have several examples of their position receding. Trump is highly unpopular in Europe, especially in some of the countries to have held elections so far. Several of the candidates who fared poorly had praised Trump — and vice versa. He’s explicitly become a subject of debate among the candidates in Germany and the U.K. To the extent the populist wave was partly an anti-establishment wave, Trump — the president of the most powerful country on earth — has now become a symbol of the establishment, at least to Europeans.

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Politico: True Finns’ dilemma: power or populism?

Since then, however, the pragmatism required of a governing party has toned down their strident Euroskeptic, anti-immigrant rhetoric. From 15 percent in the 2011 elections, a repeat performance in 2015 that showed they were not just a flash in the pan, and a peak of 20 percent support in opinion polls, the party has sagged to 8 percent. Now they are wondering how to get their mojo back.

“In opposition, it’s easier to be a populist as you don’t have to make compromises. Some supporters had unrealistic expectations of just how much the True Finns would be able to shape the government’s immigration policy,” said Tommi Kotonen, a researcher specializing in right-wing extremism at the University of Jyväskylä. [...]

Such divisions are nothing new to a party founded 20 years ago from the remains of the Finnish Rural Party, which mostly represented unemployed rural workers until it was rebranded by Soini. The party opposed globalization, free-market capitalism and elites in general, and its Finnish name — Perussuomalaiset —  is closer to “ordinary Finns” than “true Finns,” prompting the party to argue that it should be translated into English as “The Finns party.” While firmly to the right on immigration and social issues, its economic policy has traditionally been more to the left, with insiders jokingly referring to themselves as a worker’s party without socialism.

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