The most (or perhaps second most, behind their anti immigration and refugee stance) defining the European far right today seems to be their general pro-russia and pro-trump stance. But now with a possible peace deal underway, I wonder where it’s going to go afterwards.
There’s of course the most obvious possibility, that the deal goes through and Europe can get back to “normal” per se, thereby engedering parties that opposed the war or sought a deal in the first place. The parties would also possibly be buoyed by the success of Trump in not having the country explode 3 seconds into his presidency.
However, given how negotiations are going and europe bejng cut out, the general lack of incentive for Russia to go back to their previous relationship with Europe, and the fact that the economic policies of the far right are…not great, I wonder if we’ll see the opposite effect after a time. If the war ends and even if Le Pen or the AFD or Reform UK come to complete or partial power in some form or another, and conditions dont improve, I wonder if Europeans will actually swing back to the left-left of politics. Communists? Idk, the French are eurocommunists, the British can’t figure out what they’re doing, and the Germans have they’re own suppression of the DKP. But i could imagine Die Linke, Melachon’s party and/or some left party in the UK (if Corbyn ever decides to form one) getting some traction.
In any case I dont see the mainstream parties like labour and the spd surviving (good riddance)
There are two parts to the European far right. One is the so-called “populist” right (a purposely misleading label, as their “populism” is just a mask for neoliberal and pro-corporate economic policies like tax cuts for the rich), which tends to be pro-Russia in most European countries because of their shared anti-liberal, socially conservative views (though not always… in Poland for instance the right wing is just as Russophobic as the liberal centrists are).
The other are the outright Neonazis who have ties to Ukraine’s Neonazi scene and who are anti-Russian because they view the Russians as Asiatic non-Europeans and a threat to their vision of a racially pure Europe. The Ukrainian Neonazi movement has been busy over the past ten years building up connections with their counterparts in the rest of Europe, trafficking weapons and organizing para-military training camps.
They have had substantial resources to establish their networks in Europe thanks to state backing by the Kiev regime, and European governments have tolerated and turned a blind eye to these groups and their activities because of their usefulness against the Russians.
This latter group, from what i can tell, has never had a hugely positive view of Trump (in part also because of his ties to Jewish oligarchs) - though they of course welcomed his normalization of xenophobia and racism - and now if Trump ends up ditching the Ukraine project they may even turn outright hostile toward him.
I think unfortunately that both of these parts of the European right will be strengthened as a result of the Ukraine conflict. The first because it will have been validated in their skepticism toward the Ukraine project, and the second because there will be huge resentment in the Neonazi ranks over what they will perceive as the West’s betrayal of their cause.
And that second group is especially concerning, as with the end of the war we will suddenly have a large number of hardcore ideological Nazis, with ample combat experience and severe PTSD, flood into Europe as Ukraine is either taken over by the Russians or is left as an economically devastated rump state where they will be unable to find jobs after the war.
Not to mention that the black market for all kinds of very dangerous weapons, which has already been thriving thanks to the monumental levels of corruption in Ukraine, will become an order of magnitude worse as tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers with no economic prospects and no war to fight anymore try to sell whatever they have left to whoever will buy it. In practice that means organized crime and militant Neonazi networks (these two often have significant overlap in Eastern Europe btw).
Die Linke seems to be gaining some traction this campaign, and the (pat-soc?) splinter party BSW may not even get a seat. But the real draw for the AfD right now is the migration issue, not realpolitik vis a vis Ukraine and Russia. So much of a draw that all mainstream parties except for Die Linke have effectively signed on to the AfD’s immigration policies.
Let’s play the thought experiment forward one election cycle. What if the AfD were to win say, a coalition with the conservative CDU? Merz has already shown his willingness to cooperate with the AfD, so let’s assume they get a significant amount of their migration agenda done. The problem is that they’ll only be able to do so much in five years, meanwhile conditions for Germans will worsen. At that point the voters will either reject another term of AfD-CDU at the next election because there was no improvement in their lives, or they double down because the billionaire propaganda pushing fascist policies and parties keeps going and keeps convincing people that if just one more migrant (read PoC) man were to be deported everything will be fixed.
Now that I think about it, I wonder if being open to a relationship with Russia actually does the AfD favours in terms of opening up possibilities for trade again. Then again, the average German is at this point so Russopobic and such a Putin hater that this would be a non-starter. It’s probably also the case that any trade gained with Russia is trade lost with the US, so it could be zero sum.