Emboldened by Success Trump Election Boosts European Populists
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/trump-election-boosts-european-populists-a-1122077.html
It is the seventh day after Donald Trump’s triumph, an election upset that set off a political earthquake around the world, and time for a visit with those far away from Washington who think like him. Members of France’s Front National (FN) are meeting at the five-star Hotel Napoléon in Paris, not far from the Champs-Élysées.
Her words are met with cheers and applause. Marine Le Pen has struck the right note, once again. Here, in the stuffy conference room at the Hotel Napoléon, people want to hear what they have long believed: That Islam constitutes a threat and that France’s very future is on the line. Marine, the daughter of Front National co-founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, has been the head of her party for almost six years.
‘We Want To Destroy this EU’
The Frenchwoman will soon enter the presidential election campaign under the slogan “Marine 2017.” Within a few years, she has managed to garner the support of like-minded individuals, and not just in her native France. Le Pen also chairs the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) group in the European Parliament. ENF brings together elected representatives from nine countries, people who share an unmistakable common goal. “We want to destroy this EU,” says Le Pen.
Less than two weeks after the election of the new US president, Europe’s anti-establishment parties are feeling the wind in their sails. “A Trump victory was considered unthinkable,” says Le Pen, who sent the billionaire her euphoric congratulatory message on Twitter on the night of the election. “Our life has changed,” Nigel Farage of Britain’s UK Independence Party (UKIP) says over a gin & tonic in the lounge of European Parliament in Brussels. In Vienna, Heinz-Christian Strache of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) proudly reports that he has already reached out to Trump advisers in Washington. And in Dresden, Frauke Petry of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany party is planning to announce her candidacy in the 2017 Bundestag election, which is likely to see AfD land seats in federal parliament for the first time.
Populist leaders, who see themselves as the only true representatives of the people, have long known and respected each other. But the days of backroom deals are now over. Le Pen is flirting with her fellow European populists on the open stage: here a kiss of the hand for Marine in Vienna, there a chuckle and a joke with Geert Wilders in The Hague and even a little dance with Matteo Salvini, leader of the separatist Lega Nord in Italy.
Graphic: Right-wing populists on the rise
The British “yes” vote on withdrawing from the EU and the American “yes” vote for Donald Trump are supposedly merely the first stations on the road to a global political upheaval. The “democratic revolution” has only just begun, says Brexit propagandist Farage. “There are plenty more shocks to come.” And the chief strategist of the Front National, Florian Philippot, tweeted on the morning after Trump’s election: “Their world is collapsing. Ours is being built.”
In two weeks, Austria will hold a re-vote of its 2015 presidential election, in which FPÖ politician Norbert Hofer stands a strong chance of winning. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for March in the Netherlands, where Geert Wilders of the radical anti-Islamist Freedom Party (PVV) is ahead in the polls. The French will then vote for a new president in April and May, and Le Pen stands a good chance of making it to the second round of voting as the frontrunner. Finally, Germans will vote in the fall on the future composition of the Bundestag.Trump Election Boosts European Populists – SPIEGEL ONLINE
A G-7 summit in 2017 with Trump, Le Pen, Boris Johnson and Beppe Grillo — instead of US President Barack Obama, French President François Hollande, former British Prime Minister David Cameron and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi — would be a “horror scenario,” Martin Selmayr, the head of the cabinet of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker tweeted in May. Now, half a year later, Cameron and Obama are already history, Hollande is viewed as a defeated man and Renzi can be justifiably concerned about his political survival on Dec. 4, when Italians are slated to vote in a referendum on a planned constitutional reform.
The lesson from the most recent events is this: Even crass outsiders have the ability to fundamentally change the policies of a country. Farage’s UKIP holds only one seat in the parliament in Westminster, and yet it played a key role in the Brexit with its warnings of foreign infiltration on a large scale. Trump, meanwhile, succeeded in winning the election even against substantial resistance within his own party.
Populist Explosion
Populists like Marine Le Pen pronounce their verdicts on the ruling elites with the words: “in the name of the people.” The Internet and its social networks have helped shorten the path to voters. What unites the pied pipers on the right and the left, writes author John Judis in his recently published book “The Populist Explosion,” is the rage against the establishment, politics and the financial world, as well as the simultaneous demand for a strong, caring government. And, of course, the fight against immigration and Islam.
In the days of neoliberalism and globalization, social democrats like former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder failed to protect their classic clientele, writes extremism expert Cas Mudde of the University of Georgia. According to Mudde, populism is the “illiberal democratic response” to decades of “undemocratic liberal policies.”
The proponents of simple solutions are now at work around the world. In addition to Le Pen and Wilders, Strache, Salvini and Petry, the roster of right-wing populists in Europe includes men like Hungarian Premier Viktor Orbán and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who is steering the national conservative government in Poland. The leftist camp, which tries to tell the people what they want to hear, ranges from Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and Czech President Milo Zeman.
Zeman, a former social democrat and Czech president since 2013, wants his government to pursue a “foreign policy based on our own interests” rather than being “subservient in response to pressure from the United States and the EU.” He is critical of the “organized invasion” by Muslims and calls EU sanctions against Russia “nonsense.” Despite the Czech Republic’s ties to the West, he prefers to look to the East. He is eternally grateful to the Russians, says the hard-drinking and confrontational president, for the fact that, since 1945, Czechs have no longer had to shout “Heil Hitler, Heil Himmler, Heil Göring.”
Russian Influence
The Czech Republic is an important node in Moscow’s intelligence network, says retired Brigadier General Andor Sandor, former head of Czech military intelligence, in Prague. “The Russians still have many friends here and use them to exert their influence; they apparently see the Czech Republic as the most vulnerable point within the EU and NATO.” In addition to Zaman, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, his predecessor Vaclav Klaus also serves as a tool for Moscow. In his free time, Klaus campaigns on behalf of the AfD.
Russia has been trying to influence political movements in Europe for years. Now fantasies of omnipotence are mixing with the euphoria over Trump’s triumph in the United States. “Washington nash” (“Washington belongs to us”), Putin loyalists are now saying in Moscow — an allusion to the slogan “Krim nash,” coined after Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. Unified Europe will also soon disintegrate, predicts nationalist author Alexander Prokhanov. “The European nations were in the hands of schemers and liars; their days are over.”
Vladimir Putin prepared the closing of ranks with Europe’s populists with his speech against a “unipolar world” at the 2007 Munich Security Conference. Putin has successfully promoted a new conservatism and the shift toward a “non-liberal democracy,” shaped by anti-globalism, euroskepticism and the advocacy of traditional values, the Russian government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta recently wrote, concluding that “a revolutionary situation has emerged along the periphery of the Brussels kingdom.”
At the first meeting of a group calling itself the International Russian Conservative Forum in St. Petersburg in March 2015, attendees discussed the “national idea” in European countries. They included representatives of almost all euroskeptic movements in Europe, from Greece’s Golden Dawn to Italy’s Forza Nuova to Germany’s far-right NPD party. France’s Front National already maintains excellent relations with Moscow. The new head of the foreign intelligence agency, Sergey Naryshkin, has known Marine Le Pen for years. The First Czech-Russian Bank, owned by financial expert Roman Popov, provided her party with a €9 million ($9.5 million) loan back in 2014. Russian banks are also under consideration as possible financiers of the current election campaign.
The traces of Russian influence also lead to Vienna, where a secret meeting took place in 2014, at Liechtenstein City Palace, between arch-conservative fundamentalists from Russia and the West, sponsored by oligarch Konstantin Malofeev. Viennese far-right politician Johann Gudenus and FPÖ Chairman Strache were there to represent the Austrians. Strache has visited Russia repeatedly, but he denies allegations that his party receives any financial support from Russians.
Eyes on Germany
Strache is also on good terms with Marcus Pretzell, the domestic partner of AfD co-Chair Frauke Petry. Before Alternative for Germany appeared on the scene, foreign far-right parties were unable to find allies in Germany for decades. But now the FPÖ, Front National and UKIP are all the more energetically promoting the first right-wing populist party that is likely to clear the five-percent hurdle required to land seats in the Bundestag.
The AfD leadership is still divided over the issue of how closely to align itself with people like Le Pen and Strache. A group led by co-Chairman Jörg Meuthen and leading AfD politicians is hesitating about whether to develop close ties to these parties. For the two men, the Front National, in particular, is “too socialist.” But Trump’s victory in the United States is likely to invigorate the camp headed by co-Chair Frauke Petry, who, together with her domestic partner, plays a key role in creating a network of far-right groups worldwide.
High-profile meetings with the FPÖ, like the one in Düsseldorf in February where they proclaimed a “Blue Alliance” (named after their shared party color) or joint appearances by Petry and Strache, like the one in June at the Zugspitze, Germany’s tallest mountain, suggest increasingly close cooperation between the two parties. An official convergence with the Front National even appears to be getting more likely, after it was leaked that Petry and Le Pen met near Strasbourg in July.
Emerging on the Global Stage
The French politician leaves no room for doubt that if she becomes president, she will push for a referendum based on the British model. “I want to regain control over our currency,” says Le Pen, “and our borders.” British politician Nigel Farage also believes that his mission is far from fulfilled following Brexit. He appeared in the spin room to support the candidate after Trump’s TV debates, Farage says, before heading off to his favorite Brussels bar.
Farage sees himself in a new role, a sort of international traveler on behalf of the common man. He was the first foreign politician to meet with Trump after his election and Trump repeatedly cited Brexit as a model, saying that he too aimed to win against the establishment, and against the polls. He succeeded.
Now Farage and Trump see themselves as pioneers of a movement. They embody the current feeling of intoxication following the victories of anti-liberal forces. After years of waiting, they now believe they are on the verge of their goal of changing the world.
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