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France National Front presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen addresses a political rally in Lille on Feb. 25, 2007.
Father of the French far right dies
Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose ultranationalist and conservative views enraged millions but also shaped the contemporary French political scene, died on Tuesday at 96.
Le Pen was a far-right fixture of French politics for nearly five decades as a legislator in the French and European parliaments, and as founder and leader of the National Front party, which he founded in the early 1970s.
What were his politics? A theatrical orator and a fierce opponent of immigration – he sought the “purification” of France and a return to traditional Catholic values – Le Pen’s rhetoric often veered towards xenophobia, homophobia, racism, and antisemitism. At least half a dozen times he was convicted of either inciting racial hatred or denying the Holocaust.
And yet, beginning in the 1970s, he, along with anti-tax advocate Pierre Poujade, amassed a dedicated following among a slice of the French public who resented the governing elite, struggled with economic hardship, and viewed immigration from France’s former colonies in Africa and the Middle East as a threat to their livelihoods and French culture.
Le Pen ran for the presidency five times. He never won but he came closest to the prize in 2002, when he made it to a runoff against Jacques Chirac, taking nearly 20% of the vote.
Ultimately, his more extreme rhetoric came to cap the appeal of his party. When his daughter, Marine, inherited the organization from him 15 years ago, it was something she sought to address.
“He gave her a family business,” says Mujtaba Rahman, managing director of Europe at Eurasia Group. “But she had to change the brand.”
While she kept the focus on limiting immigration and protecting French cultural values, she distanced herself from his antisemitic and homophobic rhetoric, expelling him from the party, and changing the name to National Rally.
The party has surged in popularity in recent years. Politics in France – as elsewhere in Europe and the US – have shifted rightward in ways that were hard to imagine even during the height of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s polarizing influence in the early 2000s.
In 2022, Marine got more than 40% of the vote in the presidential runoff against Emmanuel Macron. And last summer, National Rally won the first round of France’s snap elections outright for the first time.
Le Pen’s legacy continues to polarize French politics. Far-right TV host and former presidential candidate Eric Zemmoursaid Le Pen “was among the first to alert France to the existential threats that awaited it.” Far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, meanwhile, said that “the fight against the man is over” but that “the fight against the hatred, racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism that he spread continues.” Macron, for his part, said Le Pen’s legacy “is now a matter for history to judge."Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen delivers a statement in Vienna, Austria, January 5, 2025.
Austria’s far right takes its first shot at government since World War II
Austria’s president asked the far-right, pro-Russia Freedom Party to form a government on Monday after talks between the traditional right and left parties collapsed over the weekend. The Freedom Party’s leader, Herbert Kickl, said he would begin negotiations with the center-right Austrian People’s Party, which had previously balked at playing second fiddle. The two parties are expected to be able to form a government now that former Chancellor Karl Nehammer from the Austrian People’s Party has stepped down.
The Freedom Party traces its roots to a former Nazi SS officer and politician, and like its peer far-right parties in Germany, France, and Italy, was heavily ostracized in the past. Now, Austria looks likely to join Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, and Slovakia as part of a growing bloc within the EU ruled by populist rightwingers.
How would a far-right government change Austria? On a policy level, Vienna is already quite conservative, advocating hardline migration and fiscal measures for the EU. Austria will also likely continue trying to exploit sanction loopholes with Russia, but not totally undermine them, says Eurasia Group’s Jan Techau.
“There are also fears of Orbanization in Austria as the far-right people are very ardent culture warriors,” says Techau, referring to the weakening of democratic institutions under Prime Minister Viktor Orban in neighboring Hungary. “We are not sure how far this can go. Austria is not Hungary, it’s a federal system, not a centralized state, and political and civil society pushback can be expected.”
We’re watching what the Freedom Party’s success might say about the rise of the far right in EU anchor states France and Germany this year.
A 'coal is dead' placard is seen during the demonstration. Activists from Friends Of The Earth and other environmental groups gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice as the legal challenge to the Whitehaven coal mine in Cumbria begins.
Hard Numbers: UK buries coal, Austria’s far right surges, Le Pen faces trial, UN extends but doesn’t expand Haiti mission, Russia spends more on guns (less on butter)
142: After 142 years, the UK government closed the country’s last coal-fired power plant on Monday night. Coal power was a critical factor in the British-born Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, but it wasn’t until 1882 that the British opened the first public coal power plant. The closure is part of the government’s plan to generate 100% of Great Britain’s energy from renewable sources by 2030. Our favorite British coal story? How coal pollution changed the color of the Peppered Moths of Manchester.
29.2: Austria’s Freedom Party became the first far-right party to win an election in the country since World War II, after taking 29.2% of the vote in Sunday’s election by appealing to Austrians worried about immigration, inflation, and the Ukraine war. But it’s a familiar story in Europe these days: A far-right party takes a plurality of the vote, only to find that it lacks an obvious coalition partner to form a government. The incumbent Austrian People’s Party has said it will only work with the Freedom Party if party boss Herbert Kickl renounces any cabinet position. That’s a tough sell – Kickl says he wants to be chancellor.
9: Meanwhile, elsewhere in European right-wing news, Marine Le Pen, the former leader and top candidate of France’s National Rally party, began a nine-week trial in which she and two dozen other party officials are accused of misusing EU funds by using them to pay party staff for political work. Le Pen says the payments were legitimate. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years in prison, fines of several million euros, and possibly being deemed ineligible to run for office. She is considered a top contender in the 2027 presidential election.
1: The UN Security council agreed unanimously on Monday to authorize the UN-backed security force in Haiti for one more year. But a US proposal to make the mission – currently a Kenya-led volunteer force – into a formal UN peacekeeping operation was blocked by Russia and China, which said the current force needs more time to find its footing. Haiti, for its part, has called for a peacekeeping operation as the Kenyan-led force struggles to subdue the powerful gangs that have taken control over vast swathes of the capital.
25: Russia will boost defense spending by 25% next year, as Vladimir Putin doubles down both on his invasion of Ukraine and on the deeper militarization of the economy at home. Social spending, meanwhile, is set to fall by nearly 20%. Heavy spending on defense has helped to insulate Russia’s economy from the effects of Western sanctions, with GDP growing 3.6% last year and forecasters predicting a similar outcome this year. How secure is Putin? Read our recent piece on the endless ends of the Russian president.Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) attends the wreath-laying ceremony at Fronhof in memory of the victims of the knife attack at the Solingen town festival. I
What do East German elections mean for next year’s national election?
The far right prevailed in East Germany over the weekend, with the Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, winning its first-ever election in Thuringia and nearly winning in Saxony. The outcome dealt a blow to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-right coalition government and boosted the far right and left ahead of the 2025 federal election.
The far-left BSW party secured third place in both states, making it a key player in upcoming government formation negotiations. Scholz’s SPD party – which barely managed to retain parliamentary representation in both states – is pushing the CDU, the only centrist party to perform strongly on Sunday, to partner with the left to box out the AfD. “In both states, the core of such alliances would be the CDU and BSW,” says Eurasia Group’s Europe Director Jan Techau, “which all by itself is a curious formation given that these two are at opposite ends of the political spectrum.”
What does this mean for the 2025 election? While the far right and left are much weaker on the national level, this election foreshadowed growing division in Germany – as well as Scholz’s rising unpopularity. It also showed that migration and Germany’s support for Ukraine will be the main campaign issues next year. “The AfD will mercilessly exploit these topics, and so will the BSW,” says Techau.
“[Scholz’s] ability to instill discipline in a very diverse coalition was never great and is now further diminished,” Techau adds. “He needs to deliver meaningful migration reform and a halfway solid budget for 2025. These are the two benchmarks. If he can’t do this … his position as the party’s candidate for 2025 will be at risk.”Participants in a left-wing demonstration walk along a street with a banner reading "AfD ban now!". Several hundred people protest against the AfD's performance in the state elections in Saxony.
AfD makes historic gains in eastern Germany
German voters delivered the hard right a significant victory in Sunday’s election, as Bjoern Hoecke’s Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, captured 32.8% of the vote in the central-eastern state of Thuringia. The result marks the first time since World War II that a far-right party has won the most seats in a German state election. In neighboring Saxony, the AfD virtually tied with the center-right Christian Democratic Union, with 30.6% to 31.9%, respectively.
The AfD’s gains have unsettled many Germans, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who called the results “bitter” and “worrying.” Business leaders cast their own blame on Scholz for creating an environment of anxiety for voters, which they say led to Sunday’s result and could sully Germany’s business environment.
But Scholz is also feeling the heat from a new leftist party, Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, which melds left-wing economics with anti-immigration and pro-Russia policies. The BSW won nearly 16% and 12% respectively in Thuringia and Saxony, cannibalizing Scholz’s junior coalition partners, the Greens and pro-business Free Democrats, who now risk losing their official status in the Thuringian state parliament.
Even though other parties pledge to exclude the AfD from government, there are fears its success, and that of the BSW, could pressure Scholz to take a harder line on immigration and a less supportive line on Ukraine ahead of next year’s national elections. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyappealed to the German Bundestag in June for additional support, AfD and BSW lawmakers left the building – a stunt that appears to have paid dividends in Sunday’s vote.
UK far-right riots and Elon Musk's role
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares his perspective on European politics from the Adriatic Sea.
What are the risks inherent in the fact that Elon Musk is de facto encouraging the right-wing thuggery that we see in the UK at the moment?
Well, I think the risks are, primarily, there for the reputation of Elon Musk. A lot of people have reacted against the fact that he's seen as de facto encouraging what is far-right violence and far-right thuggery. It's a difficult situation in the UK, and I think everyone, particularly those that have responsibility via social media, should try to make whatever they can to calm things down, not the other way around.
What’s going to be the likely effect of the Ukraine incursion into the Kursk region on the Russian war effort?
I think it's far too early to judge the nature of that particular attack or incursion. It's clearly something done with fairly qualified military units. It evidently caught the Russians by surprise, and it's fairly obvious that Putin is disturbed by it. But exactly what kind of military significance it will have one or two or three weeks down the line, that remains to be seen.
Police Officers walk past a burnt out police vehicle as they are deployed on the streets of Hartlepool following a violent protest.
Starmer responds to misinformation-fueled protests across Britain
The UK’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer convened an emergency Cobra committee meeting on Monday to address the anti-immigrant and far-right riots that have spread across England and Northern Ireland following the killing of three young girls last week.
In a major early test of his leadership, Starmer said he is establishing a “standing army” of specialized police officers and allocating more resources to the courts to handle the increased caseload related to the riots.
Starmer also said anyone inciting violence online could face legal consequences and called on social media companies to do more to crack down on extremism. He criticized Elon Musk’s amplification of inflammatory far-right posts about the riots, including one in which the billionaire wrote that “civil war is inevitable” under a video of the chaos.
Why are they rioting? After three girls were stabbed at a Taylor Swift-inspired dance class last Monday – 10 others were also injured – the suspect was inaccurately identified online as a Muslim asylum-seeker who had arrived in the UK by boat, spurring rioters to take to the streets shouting anti-immigrant and Islamophobic slogans. Over the weekend, mosques were attacked, cars were set ablaze, police officers were attacked and injured, and hundreds of rioters attempted to set a hotel housing asylum-seekers on fire.
Although Starmer’s Labour Party secured a significant majority over the Conservatives last month, the win did not erase the rise of right-wing populism in Britain. Eurasia Group’s Europe Managing Director Mujtaba Rahman says that beyond his immediate response, Starmer will “need to address the concerns over illegal immigration that have seen the rise of populism across Europe, including in the UK, and have been used by the lawless hard right to foment discord last week and this weekend.”Marine Le Pen, French far-right leader and far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally - RN) party candidate, speaks to journalists after partial results in the first round of the early French parliamentary elections in Henin-Beaumont, France, June 30, 2024.
French election: Far right wins first round
Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally won the first round of France's election on Sunday with 33% of the vote, while the young left-wing New Popular Front alliance took around 28%. President Emmanuel Macron’s gambit to capitalize on fear of the far right failed to generate excitement for his Ensemble alliance, which placed third with roughly 21% of the vote.
That said, Le Pen’s party is expected to win between 230 and 280 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly after the second round of voting on July 7. That would put them short of the 289 seats needed for an outright majority, but with enough to make it difficult for either the NFP or Macron’s alliance to form an easy coalition.
Turnout on Sunday was unusually high, around 59%, fully 20 percentage points higher than the contest in 2022. We’re watching how well that interest holds up in round two, as well as whether Macron’s efforts to coordinate with the NFP to deny the RN a majority bear fruit. If they can agree to turn competitive three-way second-round races into likely losses for the RN by strategically withdrawing candidates from certain districts and thereby consolidating anti-RN votes, they may be able to prevent a far-right majority.
The likely result will be a hung parliament, says Eurasia Group’s Mujtaba Rahman, meaning Macron would form a caretaker government with much reduced power. “France is now facing the prospect of an enfeebled caretaker government before new elections in 2025, which will leave this G-7 power and UN Security Council permanent member largely rudderless for a year.”