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What does the recent success of the far right at the polls mean for Europe? Matthias Matthijs on the continent’s new political mainstream. Brought to you by [Meco]( Recently from The Signal: Jennifer Sciubba on [why birth rates around the world are dropping](. … Today: What does the recent success of the far right at the polls mean for Europe? Matthias Matthijs on the continent’s new political mainstream. … Also: Gustav Jönsson on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the paranoid style in American politics. Subscribe to The Signal? Share with a friend. … Sent to you? Sign up [here](. ‘An Existential Question’ Shane Rounce This summer, Europe’s far right made its greatest gains ever—at the ballot box. In the European Parliament elections, right-wing, nationalist parties advanced more than any others, winning dozens of new seats in Brussels. In France, National Rally nearly won control over the National Assembly, taking 53 more seats than in 2022. And in the U.K.’s general elections, the Reform Party won 14 percent of the vote, up from 2 percent in 2019. In the Netherlands, the Party of Freedom was finally able to form a government in July, after [winning elections last November](. The new strength of these parties could mean dramatic policy changes, particularly in the areas of immigration and the climate—both at the EU level and within individual member countries. Or it could mean more than that: The far-right parties that came to power in Hungary and [Poland]( have established a record of sabotaging democratic institutions by manipulating electoral laws, undermining judicial independence, and stifling independent media. Still, despite their strong showings, none of these groups have managed to finish first in any European elections this year. And in the Netherlands, the longtime populist-right leader Geert Wilders could only forge a governing coalition in exchange for staying out of the cabinet himself. So what does the far right’s new political standing mean for Europe? Matthias Matthijs is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor of international political economy at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Matthijs says the far right’s recent successes in Europe obviously demonstrate broad support for its policy agendas—cutting immigration, slowing the reduction of carbon emissions, questioning EU funding for Ukraine’s defense, and so on. They also show a notable shift among these parties from a strategy of skepticism with Brussels to one of pursuing change from inside the EU’s institutions. But perhaps more importantly than anything, Matthijs says, the far right’s new political standing in Europe shows how mainstream its ideas have become—especially on immigration. Across the continent, more and more people are seeing the issue as a question of survival for their countries, their communities, and their lives—very much as the nationalists have been insisting. The complication is, too few of Europe’s political leaders—on the left or the right--are willing to be candid with their voters about just how much they need immigrants in the first place ... [Read on]( The Signal is a new current-affairs brand for understanding democratic life, the trend lines shaping it, and the challenges confronting it. Learn [more](. And [join](—to be a valued member, support our growth, and have full access. Advertisement From Matthias Matthijs at The Signal: - “These parties on far right—to their credit, it’s as if they’ve been doing a lot of careful focus groups, and they’ve figured out what people really care about and want. Part of that has meant appropriating some ideas from the left: Many far-right parties started out as pro-small business, anti-union, and anti-welfare state—and now, they’ve embraced the economic power of the state in certain ways. They want state benefits, for native populations—for the “deserving” people, as they see it. But a significant part has meant bearing down on the issue of immigration directly: The Flemish Interest (Vlaams Belang), a populist-right party in Belgium, has a slogan, Better a transgender than a transmigrant. In other words, nontraditional families and sexual orientations are fine—as long as the people are natives. This is a party that talks about immigrants, and the cultures they bring with them, as taking Belgium away.” - “The immigration debate is marked by a lot of dishonesty, in my opinion, on both the left and the right. The right—especially the center-right—is very comfortable talking about illegal immigration, but that’s really only a very small part of immigration to Europe. It’s just that the images of boats crossing the Mediterranean are so powerful. But European countries need immigrants. And right-wing leaders like [Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister of Italy](, and Rishi Sunak, the former premier of the U.K., know it—though they usually say so only off the record. There is a tremendous demand for labor, especially for low-skilled jobs in the service sector. That sector makes up almost 85 percent of jobs in the U.K. now—but locals don’t want these jobs because these jobs don’t pay well.” - “Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán set up a new faction in the European Parliament after the June elections—Patriots for Freedom—and the one thing all member parties seem to have in common? Great affection for Vladimir Putin.These parties will be the first to claim that the EU doesn’t have the money for Ukraine. They have no problem finding the money to crack down on immigration or increase pensions for retirees. But when it comes to Ukraine, then they’ll start talking about tradeoffs. We have to choose: schools or war?” [Read on]( The world is complex, ambiguous, and inherently uncertain … That’s why we look at it the way a detective would: Everything The Signal does starts with good questions, and every answer leads us to more of them. Become a [member]( to unlock this full conversation and explore the archive. Advertisement Managing email newsletters shouldn’t be tough. What if you had a distraction-free space, outside your inbox, for discovering and reading them? [Learn more]( NOTES The Paranoid Style in American Politics (2024) TK Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped out of the U.S. presidential race last Friday and endorsed Donald Trump. Kennedy had been polling around 5 percent—low by the standards of America’s established parties, but high by those of any third party. Third-party presidential candidates tend to have recognizable political views. In 2000, Ralph Nader represented the Greens, and in 2016, Gary Johnson, the Libertarians. Kennedy, however, has shown little ideological coherence: He began his campaign as a Democrat, continued as an independent, flirted with the Libertarian Party, and ended by throwing his support to the Republican nominee. A very strange campaign. In the course of it, Kennedy has said the Covid vaccine is a bioweapon targeting “certain races”; he’s also said a worm once ate part of his brain; he believes the Central Intelligence Agency killed not only his father but also his uncle, the 35th president of the United States. Plenty of sensible people might be attracted to a conspiracy theory or two, but for Kennedy conspiracy is a whole style of thought. Which might feel like a sign of the times. But in the U.S., it’s not unusual. It can feel almost familiar. In 1964—60 years ago now—the American historian Richard Hofstadter described a “[paranoid style in American politics](,” characterized by “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy.” Already then, he wrote, the style was “far from new.” New England preachers warned against the Illuminati in the eighteenth century; there was a strong anti-Masonic movement in the 1820s; and then, of course, there was McCarthyism in the middle of the last century—which extrapolated from the real threat of communism to an out-of-control pattern of persecution that’s still infamous by McCarthy’s name. The politics of the United States has turned on some wild ideas, again and again. And here again. —Gustav Jönsson [Explore Notes]( Want more? 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