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The AfD maintains that the Lega is weak, the FPÖ suffered an electoral debacle and now the populist front man must leave the White House. Will politics return to peace with the election of Trump?
Donald Trump was a role model and inspiration for right-wing populists in Europe. The head of the Italian Lega, Matteo Salvini, dreamed of an “international front” with Trump, Britain’s Boris Johnson and others. AfD chief Jörg Meuthen applauded Trump, as did France’s Marine Le Pen and Hungarian Viktor Orbán. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon courted them all for a move that should topple the EU’s supposed “elite project” in the 2019 European elections.
Nothing came of the powerful alliance. And front man Trump suffered a defeat in the US elections. Are European populists now also running out of air? Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier insisted on Monday in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” for a return to common sense and confidence in democracy. Former EU Council President Donald Tusk tweeted: “Trump’s defeat may also be the beginning of the end for the triumph of right-wing populism in Europe.”
“Weakness at a very high level”
In fact, Salvini, Meuthen and Co. have been weakening for months. The Italian Lega is no longer in government and in polls they dropped from 40 to 23 percent, in Austria the FPÖ flew out of the coalition with Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and suffered an electoral debacle in Vienna in October. The AfD is busy with trench warfare.
It is still too early for a swan song on the European right, says Christoph Trebesch of the Kiel Institute for World Economics. “They are weakening to a very high level,” says the scientist who, together with Manuel Funke and Moritz Schularick, has just presented a study on the historical ups and downs of populist governments and their economic policies. “It is not a phenomenon that will disappear quickly.”
Populists suffer from Corona
At the moment, Europe’s populist parties seem to be suffering mainly from Corona. A global YouGov poll this summer showed a clear decline in populist trends in many countries. These included Germany, Great Britain, Denmark, France, and Italy. Experts explain the trend with the pandemic, which is attracting everyone’s attention.
The crisis was the hour of the executive: the state ordered, the state distributed billions. Rulers and their institutions experienced a miraculous rebirth in some places. Chancellor Angela Merkel saw the CDU / CSU’s polls rise from 26 percent in February to 35 percent of the vote and more.
It is true that criticism of state intervention and the government by ordinance grew. Only populist parties barely benefited from the polls. Their problems of migration, Islamism and skepticism towards the state were in the shadows. The little people keeper approach versus the corrupt power elite did little with a virus that can affect everyone.
Through the crisis on the rolling course
Where populists were in power, they often went through the pandemic in a continuous course. Not only did Trump deliver a mixed record with high death rates and confused politics, his British ally Johnson also seemed like a determined man. “The reaction of populists in India, England, the United States, Poland and Hungary was not particularly convincing,” says Trebesch, an expert at IfW.
Trump did surprisingly well in the election, but it wasn’t enough. Therefore, your European colleagues will lack an important ally in the future. This hits Johnson especially hard. The current US president has always celebrated Brexit and lured it with a “great trade deal” between the United States and Britain, better than any deal with the EU. EU Democrat friend Joe Biden is far more skeptical of Johnson’s policies.
With Trump, the European right has lost a symbolic figure
Trump’s defeat will also shake up the debate in the media, hopes Dutch populism expert Cas Mudde, who teaches in the US “Everyone will write about” the end of populism, “which will likely get the topics off the news and right-wing parties. “
Therefore, the European right has lost a symbolic figure, a political ally in the White House, their issues are overlapping and they may lose the authority to interpret. And yet experts hope that Salvini, Le Pen and Co. will still be awaited. Why?
For one thing, his original themes have not disappeared. Le Pen, for example, refers again to radical Islamism and immigration after the attacks in France in recent weeks. He has a more reserved tone than before, which seems to be useful to him. Polls see the right-wing populist face to face with President Emmanuel Macron in the first round of the 2022 presidential elections. By the way, Salvini’s Lega remains the strongest party in Italy’s polls, at 23 to one. 25 percent. Orbán is already firmly in the saddle in Hungary.
“The virus is like a volcano”
On the other hand, the economic crisis in the crown could reignite the ire of the traditional parties. “The virus is like a volcano,” warns sociologist Matthijs Rooduijn of the University of Amsterdam in The Guardian. “It hit populism hard, but it will leave fertile ground for the future.”
Trebesch, a researcher from Kiel, agrees. Should the pandemic turn into a social and economic crisis, “the populists could get a boost again”: then the story of the people against the elite would rekindle the reproach that the establishment had failed. “Populism needs a breeding ground. And that is still there,” says Trebesch. Populists offer a friend-foe scheme, a sense of belonging, emotions, not just political content.
In terms of economic policy, the 50 populist presidents and prime ministers examined in his study have surprisingly failed since 1900: After 15 years, per capita economic power was more than 10 percent lower than in comparable scenarios.
And yet, countries that once brought populist politicians to power have been shown to do so again. See, for example, Italy, where, after Silvio Berlusconi, Salvini also grew up. Trebesch sees this “serial nature of populism” as the most surprising result of the study. “In general, the populists are survivors.”
