Far-right v. far-left in today’s politics: Where did the middle ground go?
Across the globe, politics are changing, and with it, new ideologies in politics change the way people live as well. Politics became truly important in our society, because politics have great impact in people’s life. However, dissatisfaction toward traditional politicians is real and seem to influence many others on social media. This reality opens space for populists to rise and influence those in the working class who are confused on which party, or person, should they vote. For other words, people want the real savior for all the problems facing their countries.
One study by the Pew Research Center shows that in Brazil, only 9% of the people think their economy is good and 83% claim being dissatisfied with the way their democracy works. While on the other side, in Sweden, 81% of the people think Swedish economy is good and that results in 70% of satisfaction with democracy. The same study, surveyed in 27 different countries, shows 6 in 10 people think the economic and democratic situation won’t change in their countries, no matter who wins the elections. These numbers are representative of the situation in many developed countries, where automatization, climate change and other global issues are seemed to be driving the economy to an uncertain place. This uncertainty makes people anxious, angry, and in need of a quick change.
“The buzzer is also national politics, how people seem to have lost control,” Mary Childs, senior reporter at Barron’s, said. “It’s like the Gilded Age: Communist movements, anarchists, all kind of extremism. It has to do [with] economic desperation. People feel betrayed, and they turn to different explanations.”
The recent results in the European elections for the European Parliament show a representation of the idea that people are tired of traditionalists and want to see more from the “outsiders.” Parties like The Greens, a left-wing, progressive and concerned about ecology, increased from 50 seats in the 2014’s election, to 69 seats (9.19%) in a 751 total in this year’s election. The Greens is now the fourth biggest party in the European parliament.
On the other side of the political sphere, far-right parties like the ENF (Europe of Nations and Freedom Group), which is mainly composed by French members of Marie Le Pen’s Rassemblement National and the Italian Lega Nord of Matteo Salvini, entered on this election for the first time and got 58 seats in the European parliament. Also, the EFDD (Europe for Freedom and Direct Democracy), highly attached to the Brexit Party in the UK, went from 48 seats in the 2014’s election, to 54 seats in this year’s election. Both these far-right parties are Eurosceptic, highly populist, anti-immigration and anti-Muslim. Many within these far-right parties believe diversity is bad.
Social media plays a crucial role on getting people to support far-right politicians. The current U.S. President Donald Trump have said before that Twitter helped him win the 2016 election. It is on social media, that populists spread anger, lies and misleading commentaries, promoting their desirable call to action. In this year’s European elections, politicians like Salvini, the British Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit Party, or Santiago Abascal, leader of the Spanish right-wing Vox Party, were dominant during the whole election day in both Twitter and Facebook, according to Euronews. The Belgian Guy Verhofstadt, leader of ALDE (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe) and third biggest party in the European Parliament, was the only pro-Europe to be popular online.
Traditionalists, or the centrists, are losing power, although they keep the leadership of this renewed European Parliament. The EPP (European People’s Party), a moderate centre-right, conservative, but pro-European, went from 221 seats in the 2014’s election, to 180 seats in this year’s election. This party is constituted by members of the majority of the European countries, including the German coalition CDU/CSU, which governs the German government and has the Chanceler Angela Merkel as prime-minister, and also the French Les Républicains, which is now in the French opposition to the government of Emmanuel Macron, but was in times represented by Nicolas Sarkozy, former French prime-minister between 2007 and 2012. The EPP went from a comfortable majority of 29.43% in the 2014–2019 European Parliament, to a 23.97% majority in this new European Parliament until 2024.
The S&D (Socialists and Democrats Party) also lost considerable influence in this year’s election, but they keep the second place. They went from 191 seats (25.43%) in the 2014’s election, to 146 seats (19.44%) in this year’s election. The S&D is a centre-left, socialist, progressive and pro-European party. Individuals with higher influence in the history of S&D include the British Tony Blair, which served as prime-minister between 1997 and 2007 in the UK.
The traditional centre-left parties started losing influence after the financial crises in 2008. Back then, the traditional European socialist parties in power became austere, rising taxes to pay debt. Among the working class, this change of policy made many people uprise and protest. In France, for example, the Socialist Party is one of the historical in the country. They were in times a “bastion of urban, middle-class intellectuals, whose power base was in the public-sector unions and universities,” scholar Chris Bickerton said. However, with today’s social change, the party took too long to understand the demands of the working class. That distance between the working classes and the political elites made many people lose trust and socialist parties lost popularity as well.
It is a clear fact that traditional and moderate parties are losing power, and other parties in the far-left and right are rising. However, there are deeper problems with the rise of outsiders like the acceptance of extremism.
In Germany, for example, Jews live in fear. Despite almost 75 years after the World War II, anti-Semitism is on its rise. Some people say hate toward Jews was never detached from the general Germans. In a survey done in 2018 about European Jews, 85% of the people said anti-Semitism is a real problem and 89% said this problem significantly increased during the past five years. The same survey shows there was an 86% increase on violent anti-Semitic crimes last year, and data from the police shows 89% of those crimes are attributed to right-wing extremists.
In today’s German society, Jews and Muslims should not be friends. This situation is highly influenced by the events happening in the Israeli war against Palestine. Muslims in Germany see Jews as “murders,” and perhaps this perspective shows that it is not a single religion that is more dangerous than the other. It all depends on context.
Journalist James Angelo explains that when refugees flee from their home countries in Middle-East, to come to Europe, where they can find peace and freedom, they come with their memory full of chaos. A consequence of oppression, war, toxicity, and destruction. Many young generations only lived chaos before they immigrated. Thus, it is hard for Muslim refugees to immigrate to countries where they have to live in peace with Jews. Some of them end up backlashing Jews, no matter where they were born and raised and without distinguishing Jews from Israelis.
In the German example though, it is important to “build a tolerant, pluralistic society resistant to the temptations of ethnonationalism,” Angelo said. And in this year’s European election, Germans showed they are concerned about anti-Semitism in the country and hate toward minor groups. Germany had a 61.41% turnout and Germans highly voted in the traditional coalition CDU/CSU (28.90%), The Greens (20.50%), and SPD (Social Democrats Party-15.80%). The extremist far-right party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) only shows up in fourth place with 11% of the votes.
Extremism is negative in either left and right spheres of politics. Populism can be also seen in both left and right extremes. In Greece, back in 2008, anarchists took over the streets of Athens and other cities, to only use violence as a mean to spread chaos. In the study “The Ideology of Far Left Populism in Greece,” author Roman Gerodimos said that despite the literature about populism is highly centered on the right, the discourse of anarchy (a form of populism) can be highly seen on the left. Populism, the author said, is characterized by the presence of a charismatic leader, which offers simple solutions to complex problems. This leader usually uses simple language and addresses “them” (the corrupted elites) as the main target to take down.
“Populism [is] a barometer of democracy’s health,” Gerodimos said. “The opposite of populism is not elitism, as populism favors civic inclusion and participation only in name. In reality what it does is to offer a rhetorical cover for a top-down totalitarianism that goes against the very principles of democracy. … The opposite of populism would be civic responsibility and participation within the framework of representative institutions.”
While in Greece, back in 2008, protesters destroyed over 800 buildings from public institutions like universities, libraries, banks, courthouses, police stations, or theaters, which resulted in a loss of about 1.5 billion euros. In France, just this year, the “yellow vests” took the streets of Paris. First, peacefully to protest gasoline taxes, and then influenced by populists, they became violent, until a point where the initial purpose of the movement was not in place anymore. And all of this comes up to be a matter of perception. France is one of the countries on Earth where the gap between the poor and rich is smaller. France have excellent infrastructures, almost free health and education, and other benefits that are “unknown or unappreciated,” journalist Anne Applebaum said.
Derek Chollet, a former U.S. assistant secretary of defense, says it is extremely important for citizens to not allow extremists to rise. The far-left, the author said, “wants to socialize everything,” while the far-right wants to go back in time. In today’s social environment, it takes more energy to find a common ground. And in times of quick change, politicians in centre-left and right “are often criticized as timid and weak,” Chollet said.
Ned Temko said this is a “time of anger and instability in world politics.” However, it is the people who have to take a step and make sure a rational politician is elected over one who promotes division and conflict.
“Outsiders-versus-Insiders sounds like an innocent game,” author Steve Richards says in the book ‘The Rise of the Outsiders: How Mainstream Politics Lost Its Way.’ “The juxtaposition has lost force, from overuse. But the game is deadly serious. When voters view the more orthodox elected politicians with indiscriminate disdain, the elected politicians are not the only ones who are vulnerable. Democracy is threatened, too.”
