Every time a right-wing politician wins an election somewhere in the world, observers in the United States often draw comparisons with Donald Trump. This is lazy; Mr. Trump is a unique threat to reason and order. But it also speaks to deep fears and deeper confusion: If democracy is good, why does democracy lead, increasingly, to the election of extremist parties? And can a party still be considered “extreme” when its views are accepted by such a broad swath of voters?
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The far right keeps rising. We should no longer be shocked.
In the Netherlands, the Party for Freedom (PVV) claimed victory in last month’s elections with 23.6 percent of the vote. This comes after a string of far-right gains across Western Europe. To speak of the rise of the far right is by now a misnomer. It has been rising for a long time. In Italian elections last year, Giorgia Meloni became the country’s first far-right prime minister in the postwar era. In Sweden, the Swedish Democrats became the largest bloc in the governing coalition there. Both have had to moderate and make compromises to govern.
That the PVV is on the further reaches of the far right suggests such an outcome is less likely in the Netherlands. For most of its history, it has been primarily a single-issue party with opposition to Islam and immigration as its message, its leader Geert Wilders having declared that “Islam is the biggest problem in the Netherlands.”
Voters themselves had mixed motivations, with many casting ballots for the PVV to protest high prices and a housing crisis, and out of exhaustion with Mark Rutte’s 13-year reign as prime minister. (Something similar appears to have happened in Italy’s elections last year, when voters veered sharply to the right after the solid if unexciting tenure of prime minister Mario Draghi, a lauded economist.) The Israel-Gaza war — and large pro-Palestinian protests in Amsterdam and other European cities — might have also played a role, underscoring voters’ fears around Muslim immigration and spillover from the Middle East. Before the Oct. 7 attacks against Israel, the PVV was polling a distant fourth place.
As is often the case, economic disaffection intersects in complex ways with anxiety over immigration, producing a wave of “welfare chauvinism.” As one PVV voter explained, “We are a wealthy country, but how do we in Holland have to pay that much and yet they say to migrants: ‘Come on in, have what you like, we will give you everything’?” Whatever the reasons, the PVV’s ascendance hits harder, considering the Dutch self-conception as a progressive lodestar and “guiding nation” (gidsland).
If it can happen in the Netherlands, it can happen anywhere. And it likely will. It is time to stop being shocked. Every couple years, most recently during the covid pandemic, some commentators insist that the far right’s moment has passed. In times of crisis, the argument goes, voters flock back to the boredom of reliability and competence. But the far right’s victories — and its reliable showing toward the top of the polls in countries as varied as France, Austria, Finland and Germany — suggest that the “far right” label is no longer accurate. Increasingly mainstream and even popular, these parties now find themselves closer to the center. Or, to put it differently, the “center” — on charged topics such as immigration — has veered to the right.
It is not enough to condemn the PVV or its fellow travelers as beyond the pale. They no longer are. For too long, elites have responded to the far-right’s rise with a mixture of disdain and fecklessness. A return to business as usual — with center-right and center-left parties dutifully sharing or rotating power — is unlikely. Promising curbs on immigration is not enough, especially when far-right parties pledge to crack down more aggressively. Establishment parties’ best chance is to rally citizens behind affirmative visions for the new reality of ethnic and religious diversity.
Reviving moribund centrist parties is a long-term challenge. In the short run, the best answer would be to give the PVV a chance to enter a coalition with other parties and get a taste of power for the first time. If this is what voters want, they deserve to have it. They can judge the results accordingly. In Europe’s fragmented parliamentary systems, cobbling together a governing coalition is challenging at best. Compromise is required. Purity is impossible. Once formed, coalitions are fragile. Voters should be careful what they wish for, but so too should the far-right parties that find themselves closer to power than ever. They could soon have to choose between staying true to their upstart extremism and governing in the real world.