Europe’s rapidly rising right: Hard-right forces are gaining ground ahead of next month’s European Parliament election - Lemmy.World

The longstanding effort to keep extremist forces out of government in Europe is officially over. For decades, political parties of all kinds joined forces to keep the hard-right far from the levers of power. Today, this strategy — known in France as a cordon sanitaire(or firewall) — is falling apart, as populist and nationalist parties grow in strength across the Continent. Six EU countries — Italy, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia and the Czech Republic — have hard-right parties in government. In Sweden, the survival of the executive relies on a confidence and supply agreement with the nationalist Sweden Democrats, the second-largest force in parliament. In the Netherlands, the anti-Islamic firebrand Geert Wilders is on the verge of power, having sealed a historic deal [https://www.politico.eu/article/geert-wilders-grins-the-sun-is-going-to-shine-again-in-the-netherlands/]to form the most right-wing government in recent Dutch history. Meanwhile, hard-right parties are dominating the polls across much of Europe. In France, far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is cruising at over 30 percent, far ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls [https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/european-parliament-election/]. Across the Rhine, Alternative for Germany, a party under police surveillance [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-69003733] for its extremist views, is polling second, head-to-head with the Social Democrats.