The Far Right and the European Elections
by Cas Mudde (first published in CURRENT HISTORY, March 2014)
If we are to believe the international media, this is going to be the year of the “far right anti-European populists.” In the first three days of 2014, The New York Times published two opinion essays warning of the far right’s rise, while The Economist focused its first issue of the year on “Europe’s Tea Parties.” Before this came months of public warnings of a “European populist backlash” issued by prominent European Union politicians, including the presidents of the EU, the European Commission, and the European Parliament (EP), and by national politicians, such as Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta and Dutch Deputy Prime Minister Lodewijk Asscher. While the warnings have employed different terms and point to somewhat different groups of parties and politicians, they all share at least two major messages: (1) The Great Recession has led to the rise of the far right, and (2)… read more (pdf 165kB)
