Adrian Davies, the far right’s favourite barrister, recently hosted his fellow lawyer, the leading American nazi Sam Dickson, on a private tour of the UK. When riots broke out in Manchester city centre, Davies and Dickson were in the thick of it. Being in their 60s and 70s respectively, they weren’t scuffling with police, merely happening upon the violence while leaving an art gallery. Dickson was pictured (below, left foreground) in a police ‘kettle’ outside the art gallery.
But it turns out that Dickson hadn’t flown all the way from Georgia just to visit art galleries.
One stop on his tour was in Yorkshire, where he and Davies showed up drinking beer and discussing strategy with prominent nazis including British Democrats leader, Andrew Brons (the ex-MEP who started his jackbooted odyssey in Colin Jordan’s National Socialist Movement where he pondered the ethics of synagogue arson), and Brons’s former BNP colleagues Mark Cotterill and Peter Rushton who run the self-styled ‘intellectual’ racist journal Heritage & Destiny.
Like Brons, Dickson’s far right activism dates back to the ‘60s. He has been a regular speaker at some of the world’s top racist shindigs, including the Holocaust-denying Institute for Historical Review, American Renaissance, and the secretive Charles Martel Society (of which Dickson is a trustee).
For many years Dickson was especially closely associated with the nazi apologist David Irving, and regularly hosted him at one of the wealthy lawyer’s properties in Florida. In 1992 Dickson and Klan lawyer Kirk Lyons toured the UK speaking at meetings organised by Irving.
But a few years ago, Dickson and Irving had a serious falling out, rumoured to be linked to Irving’s notoriously lax attitude to other people’s money and property. Though Irving is now crippled and forced into retirement by a stroke, it’s not thought that Dickson visited his former friend at his Notting Hill flat.
Dickson was among many racists and fascists who gathered in St Petersburg in 2015 for an ‘International Russian Conservative Forum’ sponsored by groups linked to Putin’s intelligence service. In 2017, he attended the notorious Charlottesville rally that brought together nazis and Trumpists.
If the new UK government is serious about keeping out far right extremists, Sam Dickson should have been near the top of their list. His close colleague Jared Taylor is already banned from the UK and the entire Schengen area, covering most European countries. Dickson has an even murkier record than Taylor as one of America’s most influential nazis and Holocaust deniers.
Though his presence during this country’s most serious far right violence for years was undoubtedly coincidental, serious questions should be asked at the Home Office as to why such a man entered the country.
Photo, left to right: Andrew Brons, Sam Dickson, Unknown man, Mark Cotterill, Adrian Davies, Peter Rushton.
Well, there you go then! That seems to be the conclusion of at least some on the far right regarding arrests and charges arising from the Notting Hill Carnival. Which ‘there’ this data is meant to lead us to is far from clear.
There you go then… assemble a huge, predominantly black crowd and there will be crime, perhaps. But then we can’t recall anyone saying any different. Crowds of any colour mix, especially ones with liberal amounts of alcohol in circulation, do have a tendency not so much to generate trouble as to draw together likely sources of misbehaviour.
Whether a crowd has pre-loaded on Tennent’s and Teacher’s, Stella and Stoli or Red Stripe and Red Leg doesn’t seem to make an awful lot of difference.
What may well be intended, in fact, is more of a ‘There you go then… two-tier policing!’ The innuendo certainly seems to be emanating from the same online dry white whiners who have so eagerly latched on to this almost meaningless slogan – the bleating heart of the internet, if you like. But how does a stack of arrests in Notting Hill support an assertion of double standards?
Tippy-tapping away in his latest EU funk-hole, Stephen Lennon (posting as ‘Tommy Robinson’) reckons he can have it both ways – it’s evidence of both criminal ethnic types and selective policing all in one bundle. We should not be too surprised by this. If there were a Yaxley family motto it would surely be ‘Amamus consumere tamen habere crustum’ – roughly ‘we like to eat yet still have our cake’.
If he wants it, he should get in fast. Once R Slicker (the next Conservative Party leader) pollutes an honours list with Lord Johnson of Partygate, Boris will adopt the motto in a flash. Though come to think of it, now that he is officially Irish, perhaps Lennon would prefer the legend in Gaelic (which is, sadly, beyond our linguistic skills).
Anyway, back to the Tommy tippy-tapping, “Notting Hill Carnival 2 day event seen 8 stabbings,” howls The Fugitive semi-literately. “A dozen sexual assaults. 3 guns seized. 50 police officers injured.” So there you have complaint number one – lawlessness with a lot of non-white people involved. And complaint number two? “Keir Starmer ignores all that, takes a swipe at the protesting English again, this time calling everyone ‘nazis’!”
Oh dear. This is a glaring example of that increasingly common 21st Century phenomenon: a phone that’s smarter than its owner.
We make no excuses for the criminality at the carnival – especially the violence – and we’re sure Keir Starmer doesn’t either. Every stabbing is a despicable act. But we do need some kind of context for the figures. No one knows how many people took part in the Notting Hill Carnival, but for the past two decades or so the Mayor of London’s office has attached a baseline figure of one million. Several sources report that this year – a warm and sunny one – saw more like two million attendees.
That is a simply enormous crowd. In other, perhaps more excitable countries than ours, we would not be surprised to hear that a gathering on such a scale had resulted in a stampede, with dozens crushed underfoot. In Britain, it’s mostly a case of Keep Calm and Carry On.
There was, indeed, crime. Some of it nasty. But we don’t recall any reports of mobs screaming racial abuse, charging police lines, throwing bricks, looting shops and setting fire to vehicles and buildings, including (for goodness’ sake!) a library and community job-seeking hub. In short, the people at the Notting Hill Carnival were mostly just having a nice, laid-back time. They were not staging hate-filled riots, like those scumbags who did so while chanting ‘Tommy Robinson’ in various towns and cities.
In total about 330 people were arrested across the span of the carnival, which rather makes a mockery of the assertion of far right megamouths that police are too timid or ‘woke’ to arrest black people and their lefty pals. (For ‘lefty’ read white people who mix happily with other races).
“Aha!” cries an imaginary voice that sounds, nonetheless, rather like Nigel Farage. “But more people than that were arrested at the rio… er… the protests, and there were only a few thousand people at those, so the proportion of the crowd arrested was much bigger. So it is two-tier policing.”
Really, only one thing needs saying to establish that this train of thought is some Southern Rail old knacker that is going to break down before it has finished pulling away from Platform 1. The vast majority of people who went to the carnival did so to dance in the street, dress up as goodness knows what or munch on a freshly fried samosa. The majority of people who went to the riots did so in order to… er… riot. Of course the proportions arrested will be wildly different.
So, Searchlight is completely writing off the idea of two-tier policing, then? Well, not exactly. We do in fact get the impression that there’s some picking and choosing going on – just not in the way that the panty-wetters of the far right would have you think.
As far away as Pakistan (!) a man has been arrested for publishing the invented Arab-sounding name that was circulated online as being that of the Southport murderer, and which undoubtedly helped to fuel the anti-Muslim riots. There’s surely little doubt that this arrest is at the UK’s behest. But at least one large-circulation Pakistani daily has stated that its contacts within the investigating bureau believe the website involved, C3N, merely cocked up.
This makes sense. C3N is what is known in publishing as an ‘aggregator’. That is to say, it does no investigative journalism itself but scours the worldwide web for stories and repackages them. This gives the site owners a (hopefully) lucrative advertising platform without the need to employ any real journalists.
Not even the British end of the arrest seems to have any faith that a hard-core bad ‘un has been nicked in Pakistan. The BBC reports that its (presumably UK) police sources believe that C3N’s action was “an error, not intentional”. C3N certainly didn’t invent the name circulated. ‘Walk back the cat’ and you can see that the name appeared on UK social media quite some time before C3N published it.
Does this let C3N off the hook? Not entirely, because it published the name recklessly, with no attempt to validate it, in extremely volatile circumstances. We cannot be sure that the man – one of the website’s three owners – will face trial over the mess, but it does look likely.
How do we see any two-tier policing in this? Because right-wing rentagob Katie Hopkins did exactly the same thing – published the fake name without any attempt to check that it was correct, leaving her many witless followers to believe that a Muslim had killed the Southport schoolgirls. And has ‘Hatie Katie’ appeared in court over this? We don’t recall seeing her name listed in that connection.
Or take the case of the Northern Ireland loyalist who has been arrested, charged and remanded until 20 September over an online post calling to “stop the spread of evil Islam”. You may say that the word ‘evil’ is particularly inflammatory, but you might also think that, otherwise, there’s not a great deal of difference between that post and one by Reclaim Party leader Laurence Fox saying that “We need to remove Islam from Great Britain. Completely and entirely.”
Some would argue that that Fox’s demand is the worse of the two, because what he wants would clearly require violence – the idea that all of GB’s Muslims would happily emigrate of their own accord is laughable. Have we seen ‘Looza’ in court over this incitement to hatred? If so, the report has eluded Searchlight.
We don’t really need to find comparisons for Stephen Lennon’s lance corporal, Daniel Thomas (aka ‘Danny Tommo’), because his message to his 68,000 followers that “It has to go off in different cities” and that “Every city has to go up” would undoubtedly have added to the sentences already received by many small-fry rioters. ‘Tommo’ even organised the Whitehall protest that saw other boneheads jailed. But has he been brought to book? Not that we can see.
The wretched reptile that is Nigel Farage is employing some calculated sophistry to disavow his own sins, but we’re really not sure how he’s getting away with it. After pooh-poohing the idea that the Southport murders were, as the police has stated “non-terror related”, the Reform UK Ltd owner added “I just wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us.”
Despite his protestations that this was a question, not an assertion, and that he had not actually deployed the specific word ‘liars’, no reasonable person could doubt that he was indeed accusing the police of being exactly that – liars. The suggestion that the authorities were not telling the truth about the Southport schoolgirl stabbings was like throwing a bucket of petrol on a smouldering fag-end. Has he even been questioned by the police about this? Not as far as we can tell.
As for ‘Tommy Robinson’, we could write a whole extra feature about his status as a riddle wrapped in an enigma nested in a sun-lounger. Suffice it to say that some days it feels like half of ‘the establishment’ wants him behind bars, the other half wants him on the loose, and the two trip each other up at every opportunity. Why any of the establishment should prefer not to see him picking oakum is an intriguing question.
So, if you want to talk about ‘two-tier policing’, Kameraden, instead of desperately trying to conjure up fantasies about how white people are being persecuted by the government, Crown Prosecution Service and police, why not ask yourself why the small fry (or, as loosely Irish Lennon would probably have it, The Little People) are being sent down in droves over the riots, while the ‘influencers’ with big social media followings seem to enjoy immunity.
Perhaps the man whom the knuckle-draggers have dubbed ‘Two-Tier Keir’ should have a go at explaining not why the riots needed putting down (which they plainly did) but why it’s always the poor bloody infantry who get prosecuted and not the far-right generals. Are their Twitter followings really that intimidating?
Photos, clockwise from top left: Nigel Farage, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (‘Tommy Robinson’), ‘Danny Tommo’, Laurence Fox, Katie Hopkins, .
BRYAN WALL warns that, despite low polling numbers for far-right groups in Ireland’s recent local and European elections, we must remain alert to their growing numbers
This year’s election results in Ireland show that the country is not immune from far-right politics. Held on 7 June, the local elections and European Parliament (EU) elections attracted over 100 candidates from far-right parties or those linked to them.
Support for these parties in Ireland has historically been low to non-existent. However, the far right has become more vocal and organised across the country in the past five years. Arson attacks and blockades on proposed accommodation for asylum-seekers have become common, alongside calls on social media for all migrants to be deported.
Far-right rallies are now regular events, where there are calls for the government to be overthrown, as well as routine attacks on the LGBTQIA+ community and women’s rights. These rallies are attended by between a handful and a few thousand.
In the months leading up to the elections, the largest opposition party, Sinn Féin, had been expected to do extremely well. Polling showed it consistently attracting support at the expense of the traditional vote-getters in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. But in March the party’s long-held position on immigration became better known when its President Mary Lou McDonald stated, “Sinn Féin is not for open borders”, the latter term a common dog whistle among the far right.
The result was an almost instantaneous decline in the polls, undoing months of rapid gains and sometimes dominance over Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. This ensured that on polling day the latter two did better than expected, with the political status quo remaining largely upheld.
From late 2023 onwards the Farmers’ Alliance, Ireland First, the Irish Freedom Party (IFP), The Irish People, and the National Party (both branches) all announced their intention to run candidates on an anti-immigration platform. Their differences are minimal and centre mostly around definitions of Irish identity and occasional economic disagreements, with the exception of the National Party.
Two parties, same name
In the case of the latter, a falling out between its two leaders, Justin Barrett and James Reynolds, resulted in both men asserting leadership of the party and their respective acolytes claiming the National Party name for themselves. Applications to the Electoral Commission by both men to amend the party’s registration details, including its leader, were rejected and both factions ran candidates under the same party name.
As a result, voters in some constituencies had the choice of voting for one of two candidates seemingly running under the National Party name, but following different leaderships. For example, this was the case of the EU elections, where in the Dublin Constituency Barrett’s wife Rebecca ran against Reynolds’ deputy Patrick Quinlan.
Overall, at 49.4% turnout was lower than in previous years, but continued a trend set in 2019 and 2014 when turnouts were 50.2% and 51.6% respectively. The two establishment parties maintained their relative electoral success at the expense of Sinn Féin, while the left made no substantial gains.
This trend also saw far-right groups and individuals largely fail in their electoral ambitions. Some, such as Andy Heasman — an admitted former drug dealer — of The Irish People who received just 140 first-preference votes, struggled to gain more than a few dozen votes.
Others, however, were elected, namely: Malachy Steenson, an independent candidate in the North Inner City constituency in Dublin; Quinlan, the candidate for the Reynolds’ branch of the National Party in the Blanchardstown-Mulhuddart constituency; Gavin Pepper, an independent candidate in the Ballymun-Finglas constituency; Tom McDonnell, an independent but founder of far-right Éire Saor in County Kildare; and Glen Moore, a contender for the IFP in the Palmerstown-Fonthill constituency.
In the cases of Moore, Pepper, Quinlan and Steenson, they gained success in the capital, Dublin. All men are regular attendees and speakers at anti-asylum-seeker rallies. After his election Steenson declared his success “a fabulous result for the nationalist movement in Ireland, for the people of Ireland, we’re taking our nation back”.
Of interest to UK readers will be the election of Moore, whose party leader Hermann Kelly, was a press officer for Nigel Farage, when the former UKIP leader was an MEP. Kelly is currently a press officer for right-wing Romanian MEP Cristian Terheș and at a demographics conference in 2021 in Budapest is known to have mixed with anti-gender rights agitators.
Demography is a regular talking point in the Irish far-right milieu, and Kelly is no different, having previously declared Ireland to be in “demographic peril” because of the “LGBT lobby” and its “barren, sterile lifestyles and ideology”, arguing that it “seeks not equality but privileges”.
Like Kelly, McDonnell has voiced opinions on Irish demography: “If we don’t have women breeding, we die out as a breed. We don’t want that to happen.” After a backlash in response to his comments across the country, McDonnell told the Sunday World that “we need to produce more children of our own origin, of our own people” and that “Khazarian Jews” are attempting to replace Irish people.
Concerning shift
The election of these right-wingers represents only a small percentage of councillors in Ireland. But the success of the far-right groups illustrates a shift and should not be underestimated. Given the sheer number of far-right candidates standing for election, the wider political wing of the far right in Ireland could be seen to have failed.
The election of even one should be viewed as troublesome, given the increasing boldness and violence of the far right in Ireland. However, the election of five is indicative of a major problem.
Add to that the fact that Ireland First’s Derek Blighe picked up 25,071 first‑preference votes as candidate in the Ireland South constituency in the EU elections. This was far short of the quota required to gain office, yet more than 25,000 people chose to vote for the leader of a party who supports the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory and who claims that Ireland is under “assault” from “fake refugees”. His views are well known and him polling these numbers represents a serious shift in Irish politics.
Photos: Top row:elected councillors Independent Tom McDonnell and Glen Moore of the Irish Freedom Party (far left and centre), and failed candidate IFP party leader Hermann Kelly (left); Bottom row: rival Nationalist Party faction leaders Justin Barrett (far left) and James Reynolds (centre), and Reynolds’ deputy, Patrick Quinlan (right), who was elected as a councillor
This article first appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Searchlight
Scaremongering about a so-called left threat failed to panic French voters. Instead, writes ROGER PEARCE, the majority set aside their differences, voting against Le Pen’s toxic xenophobia and so stopping her taking a step closer to the presidency
As part of her effort to disguise a reinvention of French fascism, Marine Le Pen renamed the National Front (FN) as the National Rally (Rassemblement National, RN) in 2018, but after six years of her strategy of dédiabolisation (“de‑demonisation”) it was anti-fascists, in a historic parliamentary election on 7 July, who rallied to defeat her and very likely end her hopes of the presidency.
Following years of division, French democrats agreed to set aside their differences long enough to agree on the need to defeat Le Pen’s toxic xenophobia. And, within days of her defeat, Le Pen began dropping her mask of moderation, choosing to ally with a pro-Russian group in the European Parliament.
Le Pen started the election campaign by appearing to succeed in uniting the French far right, patching up a long-running family feud with her niece, Marion Maréchal. For several years, Maréchal has been French fascism’s ambassador to both the US new right and Russia’s Vladimir Putin autocracy. In February 2018, she was guest speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), held in a Washington suburb, which brings together libertarians, Trumpists, big business and redneck David Duke fans.
In those days, CPAC’s organisers were able to claim that Maréchal represented a pro-business, “classical liberal” tendency inside the French right, in contrast to her aunt and what was then the FN, which had adopted a more traditional European statism.
This split seemed to harden at the end of 2021 when Maréchal allied with the Islamophobic journalist Éric Zemmour to form a new party, Reconquête, aiming to replace Le Pen’s RN as the main force on the French far right. Maréchal and Zemmour were eager for their new party to become Putin’s closest French allies. Just before her visit to Washington in 2018, Maréchal and other FN dissidents created ISSEP, a private university in Lyon. She set out to build close connections between ISSEP and Russia, visiting St Petersburg University and appointing pro-Putin lecturers.
She also recruited prominent figures in the Anglo-American far right, including Paul Gottfried (once a regular speaker for US racist organisations such as Jared Taylor’s American Renaissance and Peter Brimelow’s VDARE), and Raheem Kassam, former senior adviser to Nigel Farage.
Opportunist pacts
Although Reconquête had run out of steam by the time this year’s elections were called, Le Pen realised that her niece had greater appeal than she had to middle and upper-middle class voters.
At the start of the election campaign, Le Pen seemed to be justifying an old‑fashioned Marxist analysis of fascism. In defence of their wealth and privileges, the French bourgeoisie seemed prepared to hold their noses and vote for the type of crude xenophobia they might pretend to deplore at Parisian dinner tables.
And for a few weeks the house journals of supposedly “liberal” middle class Europeans and Americans seemed to be rallying round: perhaps Le Pen was not so bad compared with the “threat” of left‑wing tax rises? Perhaps we should all just ignore her political heritage, turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to her toxic rhetoric, and see her as just another conservative?
Le Pen took two important steps towards sealing this deal. First, she dealt a terminal blow to Reconquête, tempting Maréchal and others back into alliance with the RN and leaving Zemmour isolated. Then she encouraged a split in the main French conservative party, which in recent years has been called the Republicans.
Their leader, Éric Ciotti, took his followers into a pact with RN. The Republican organisation was left in confusion, with the anti-Ciotti faction, who wanted to maintain a conservative party untainted by fascism, for a time locked out of their own party offices. The courts eventually reinstated Ciotti as nominal leader of the Republicans, but it is only a matter of time before the party formally disintegrates.
Election shifts
French parliamentary elections are held in two rounds, and at the first round it seemed that Le Pen’s strategy was succeeding, building up expectations that the RN would at the very least be the largest party in the National Assembly and might even (helped by Maréchal, Ciotti and other new conservative allies) obtain a parliamentary majority.
Having stood down in several constituencies in each other’s favour, the RN won 37 seats outright in the first round, with one for its far-right conservative allies, winning more than 10.6 million votes (33.2%). This was an astonishing increase on the 4.2 million polled by the RN in 2022.
The remaining Reconquête candidates were now obviously irrelevant and took less than 1%.
However, it is important to remember the effect of different electoral systems: in the second round of the 2022 presidential election, when offered a direct choice between Emmanuel Macron and Le Pen, 13.3 million French voters backed Le Pen versus 18.8 million backing Macron.
Under the French system, any candidate whose first-round support totals more than 12.5% of the electorate, can stand in the second round, which means that second rounds can include three or even four candidates. This year, Le Pen was counting on hostility between President Macron’s liberal centrists and the notoriously divided French left.
What she did not expect was that personal ambition and factional differences would be set aside, in the most successful anti-fascist electoral mobilisation Europe has seen. Socialist and green factions had already united in the first round under the apt title New Popular Front, and won 32 seats in that round, polling 28.2%.
But most observers (and certainly Le Pen and her “Prime Minister-designate” Jordan Bardella) thought it would be impossible for the New Popular Front to reach agreement with the President’s party Ensemble.
Le Pen counted on Ensemble and either the left or green candidates standing against each other in the second round, or on their respective voters abstaining in large numbers. Instead, there was a widespread anti-fascist electoral pact, and a high turnout, especially among young voters determined to stop Le Pen.
Where the anti-Pen candidate was from the left or greens, and even if the anti-fascist standard bearer was from the hardest of hard left factions, centrists rallied behind them, and vice versa.
The outcome was that Le Pen’s party won only 88 extra seats in the second round, with a further 16 for her conservative allies. Far from being the largest group in the new Assembly, the combined far right has 142 seats compared to 180 for the New Popular Front, 159 for Ensemble, and 39 for those Republicans who refused to follow their leader into a Faustian pact with fascism.
A further 57 seats are held by a variety of locally based independents and miscellaneous factions who refuse to ally formally with any of the main groups. But from the moment the exit poll was broadcast on the evening of 7 July, it was obvious that Le Pen and Bardella had been defeated.
Risky gamble
Exactly how France will be governed with this divided Assembly is not yet clear. Having won a great victory over fascism, all of the centrist, green and left factions have a continuing heavy responsibility.
But, despite their bold rhetoric, it seems obvious that Le Pen and her RN colleagues recognise that their strategy has failed. Whereas before the election it seemed possible that she would continue heading towards the mainstream right, and perhaps form a pact with Italy’s “post-fascist” Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Le Pen has instead taken the RN into the new “Patriots for Europe” group headed by the blatantly authoritarian and pro-Moscow Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
She is gambling on a Putin victory in Ukraine and on the collapse of Western European democracy. That gamble looks far more risky, now that a reinvigorated Democratic Party is rallying behind US presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
But French anti-fascists know that (so far) they have only won a partial victory, on which they must continue to build so that the Le Pen dynasty and its poisonous politics can be destroyed forever at the 2027 presidential election.
This article first appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Searchlight
This article originally appeared here on 14 June. It has been updated to include the far right realignments in the European Parliament following the elections.It also appears in the Summer 2024 issue of Searchlight,
Shock gains for far-right parties right across Europe saw France face a snap election and Belgium’s PM resign. Although the right fell short of its hoped-for majority, the centre is in trouble – and that is bad news for all of us.
By Martin Smith
The evening the European Parliamentary election results for France were announced, Marine Le Pen held a party at a swanky nightclub in the woodlands of the Bois de Vincennes, east of Paris. It was a select gathering of dignitaries from the far-right Rassemblement National (RN). In attendance was the party’s poster boy, Jordan Bardella.
They had cause to celebrate. Le Pen’s RN had won 31 per cent of the vote, gaining 30 European Parliamentary seats (a 12-seat increase on the previous European election), whereas President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance Party lost more than half its previous seats and votes.
The results were a crushing blow for Macron. A jubilant Le Pen declared at her celebration: “We are ready for power if the French people put their trust in us.” Bardella pushed even harder: “The President of the Republic cannot remain deaf to the message sent this evening by the people of France.” He went on to demand that Macron call an early election.
Macron’s response to the gauntlet thrown down by Bardella was quick, unambivalent and risky. Announcing a snap election, he said: “I’ve heard your message and I will not let it go without a response. France needs a clear majority in serenity and harmony, I cannot resign myself to the far right’s progress in France and everywhere in the continent.”
His statement is revealing, both acknowledging the scale of the vote for the RN and the rise of the far right across Europe. The RN’s results should not be downplayed, they were a huge blow for the centre parties of Europe. It is with some justification that Macron thinks that France is the powerhouse of the European Union (EU) and he is the driving force of the centre parties.
Far-right gains
The French results were the high point for the far right in Europe, but there were many other significant results (see tables). Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s fascist Brothers of Italy more than doubled its seats in the EU parliament, coming first with 24 seats, securing 29 per cent of the national vote.
An overjoyed Meloni stated that she was “emboldened by the results” and vowed to play a fundamental role in Europe. Despite a strong challenge, Viktor Orbán’s populist far-right party Fidesz topped the Hungarian polls, winning 11 seats and gaining 45 per cent of the vote. In Austria, the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) came first, winning six seats and gaining over 25 per cent of the vote. Finally, Belgium’s Vlaams Belang (VB) came joint first with three seats.
In Poland, although Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition (KO) came first with 37 per cent, the total vote for the far right was significantly larger. The right-wing populist PiS (Law and Justice) ran Tusk close, winning 20 seats (36 per cent), and the fascist far-right multi-party alliance Confederation (Konfederacja) came third, winning six seats and taking 12 per cent of the vote.
Several far-right parties also came second or third. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was rocked by scandals involving its candidates’ support for the Nazis in the run-up to the election. Despite this, it still managed to beat German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democratic Party to second place.
The AfD won 15 seats, gaining 16 per cent of the vote. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilder’s far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) came second, winning six seats.
Other important votes for the far right included third places for Spain’s Vox and the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR). In Bulgaria, the ultranationalist Revival Party came fourth in both the EU elections and the parliamentary elections, which were held on the same day.
Shock waves
The levels of support for the far right have sent shock waves throughout Europe. Not only did it force Macron to call a snap election, but Belgium’s Prime Minister Alexander De Croo also resigned after his Flemish Liberals and Democracy Party (Open VLD) suffered a heavy defeat in the European and general elections, both held on the same day. A new government will be formed, and it is unlikely that the far-right populist party VB will be invited to join it, but the new government may coalesce around the separatist right‑wing New Flemish Alliance (N-VA).
Finally, in Austria a general election is set to be held on 29 September, with the far-right FPÖ currently topping the polls. By September the political map of Europe could be redrawn again.
There were some setbacks for the far right, most notably the decline in support for Fidesz, the Czech Civic Democratic Party and Matteo Salvini’s Lega per Salvini Premier (LSP) in Italy. Despite these setbacks across much of Europe, the far right is in the ascendancy.
Media response
When the results were announced the mainstream media gave a collective sigh of relief focusing on the fact that the centrist parties still hold the majority of seats in the European Parliament (Table 1). This is true: the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) is the biggest bloc, gaining 9 more seats to total 188 compared to the 2019 elections. While the centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D) vote remained relatively stable, with only four seats lost, the liberal Renew group was decimated, losing 21 seats, and the Green bloc lost 17 seats.
The idea promoted by the media, that the centre is holding, ignores the far right’s paradigm shift across Europe; its overall vote has increased by 5 per cent. This is part of a long-term trend that has seen the far right making similar size gains in the European elections of 2014 and 2019.
Another area the media has focused on during the 2024 election are the sharp differences between the far-right parties, arguing that it makes it impossible for them to unite. The respected political scientist Cas Mudde reinforced this view, stating in The Guardian: “Although polls predict huge gains for the far right, its deep divisions mean that the victory may prove to be a pyrrhic one.”
Currently, the far right in the European Parliament is found in three formal groupings and among the non-attached odds and sods. The first group is the Le Pen-led Patriots for Europe (PfE), an enlarged rehash of the last parliament’s Identity and Democracy (ID) group; the PfE includes Le Pen’s RN, Vox and PVV plus Fidesz, Chega!, VB and Lega. It has 84 seats.
The second is the Meloni-led European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR); founded by the UK Conservative Party. This is now dominated by the Brothers of Italy, PiS and Sweden Democrats. It holds 78 seats.
The third group is the new Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN), which largely exists to provide a home for Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) members shunned by the ID group over alleged Nazi sympathies (yes, we know, don’t get us started!). With 14 members, AfD is by far the biggest party in this 25-seat group. (A 15th AfD man, the SS apologist and rumoured Chinese intelligence asset Maximilian Krah, has been cold-shouldered and sits among the non-attached radical left and right MEPs).
The three far-right groups might be regarded as the second-biggest bloc in the parliament. Added together, they hold 187 seats, only just short of the European People’s Party’s 188.
There are deep divisions within the ranks of Europe’s far right. Both Orbán and Le Pen have close ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia and their support for Ukraine and NATO is at best lukewarm. On the other hand, the PiS and Meloni back NATO and are solidly behind Ukraine. It would be in their interests to try to overcome these existing political hurdles and create a powerful far-right bloc in the European Parliament.
These differences should not be downplayed; it is a truism to say that the far right is a band of warring brothers. Yet much unites them: all campaigned on an anti-immigration ticket, in defence of the family and against “gender ideology”.
The growth of the Conservative Political Action Conferences (CPAC) demonstrates the developing links between global extremists and the possibilities of building a right-wing parliamentary block.
Only a decade ago it was widely argued in academic circles that right‑wing electoral parties were strongest in eastern Europe because of the economic and social dislocation produced by the transition from communism to free‑market capitalism. The growth of the far right across western and northern Europe clearly demonstrates that this no longer the case. One of the most worrying developments is the embedding of the far right in the “big three” European powers – France, Italy and Germany.
Wider implications
Far-right parties are shaped by national historical and social issues, but there are also factors that cut across national boundaries. One important factor is the “normalisation” of the far right. The electoral success of all of the far-right groupings has been due to their ability to put forward simple solutions and populist slogans to complex problems.
The key mobilising issue for the far right is its anti-migrant and anti-Islam message. But, instead of challenging the lie that migrants and refugees are responsible for poverty and the decline in services, mainstream parties are copying and introducing their own anti‑migrant/refugee policies.
This is creating a toxic vortex. Thus, we see a legitimisation of the far right, which in turn reinforces the idea that immigration is the problem, which in turn encourages the far right to be even more emboldened in its anti-migrant and racist rhetoric.
During the election, all the main far‑right parties used anti-Semitic tropes (Soros conspiracy theories and talk of global elites) and brazen Islamophobia. They are not, as some claim, diluting their hard-line anti-immigration message, instead they are attempting to popularise it.
Since the end of the Second World War and right up to the late 1990s, mainstream European parties placed a “cordon sanitaire” around the far right. Most politicians refused to debate with their representatives and, with the exception of Italy, parties would not countenance entering into coalition with the far right. This was an important stance; it was a clear demonstration that fascism and right-wing populism were toxic and shared much of the ideological world view of Mussolini and, in some cases, Hitler.
This “cordon sanitaire” is rapidly breaking down. The electoral success of many far-right parties means that many mainstream politicians of the centre right have accepted them into their electoral coalitions.
In the Netherlands, Wilders and the PVV now lead a coalition government, which includes the centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the centrist New Social Contract and the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB).
In the Swedish Riksdag, the Sweden Democrats have a “confidence and supply” agreement with the centrist government, and in Czechia the right-wing populist Civic Democratic Party (ODS) heads up a coalition with an assortment of Christian Democratic and liberal conservative parties.
With success in the European Parliament elections come massive financial rewards. Every MEP receives a monthly pre-tax salary of €10,075, as well as a general monthly expenditure allowance of €4,950. MEPs also get a monthly budget of €28,696 to cover all costs involved in recruiting personal assistants, and they are reimbursed for their travel and accommodation.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Buried in the European Parliament’s website is the annual budget awarded to each European grouping. So, for example, in 2021 the ECR was allocated €4.1 million and the ID €4.6 million. These eye-watering amounts of money will enable the far right to further professionalise their electoral machines, pay full-time organisers, provide access to research and fund their publications.
Traditionally, young people have tended to vote for left-of-centre parties. However, a worrying trend, which was also present in the 2024 European Parliamentary elections, is the growing support among young people for the far right. In France, a poll conducted just before the election revealed that 32 per cent of 18- to 25-year-olds said they would vote for the RN.
Likewise in Poland, exit polls showed the far-right Confederation was the most popular choice with voters aged 18-29 years, polling 31 per cent of the vote. A similar picture can be seen in Belgium where the Flemish far-right VB party is winning support among young men (aged 18-27), nearly 32 per cent of whom said they would vote VB.
Defining the far right
During the election, BBC reporters described far-right parties as either “hard right” or “extreme right”. This does not provide an adequate explanation of their historical roots, ideology or political practice.
We now find ourselves in the bizarre position where the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, only labels the ID grouping as far right. In her view, the ECR can be described as a conservative grouping, despite the fact that it is headed by the Brothers of Italy and contains PiS and Vox MEPs.
The danger of von der Leyen ignoring the political make-up of the group is that it downplays the size of the far right in the parliament and also mainstreams them. In this article, we have used the term far right, but if we are going to better understand these parties, we need to be more precise with our terminology.
The first far-right formations in the European Parliament are the right-wing populists, who include Fidesz and the PiS. Outside of the European Parliament you could include Donald Trump and Nigel Farage.
Then there are those that could be described as post-classical fascist parties, such as the Brothers of Italy, RN and the SD. These formations have similar political features to the populist parties: both campaign against migrants, Muslims and elites, and both formations are ultra-nationalistic to their core. Also, when in power they are authoritarian and promote the idea of the strong leader.
However, there are important differences. Mudde has played a key role in developing a conceptual framework to define right-wing populism. He argues that it combines nativism, authoritarianism and populism.
Academics Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin focus primarily on a demand-side explanation to define right-wing populism, which they call the “Four Ds”. These are: (1) “Distrust” of liberal democracy and elites; (2) “Destruction”, the loss of national identity; (3) “Deprivation”, the belief that inequality is growing, and the indigenous population is being left behind; and (4) “De-alignment”, the weakening of the bonds between people and the traditional parties.
Post-classical fascist parties differ from their populist friends in several ways. They have ideological/historical links with previous fascist parties.
Second, in a search for electoral success, they have undergone a process of “modernisation”. Le Pen and her father were the architects of this strategy. It involved cleaning up the party’s public image, dropping aggressive anti-capitalist rhetoric, and toning down its racism and anti-Semitism and instead promoting the ideas of nation rather than race.
Finally, powerful electoral machines have replaced the street thugs. Two things are worth noting: the modernisation strategy undertaken by all post-classical fascist parties has both created internal tensions and splits, and their past adherence to fascism haunts their electoral campaigns.
It is important not to treat these formations as static entities. They are in a constant state of flux and there is a growing cross-fertilisation of ideas between the two traditions. Increasingly, they are prepared to adopt one another’s strategies and policies. Understanding the nature of these parties and the political strategies they develop is not solely an academic exercise, it enables anti-fascists to recalibrate their campaigns and better understand how to undermine them.
For instance, in Britain, when the British National Party (BNP) shifted away from street fighting in the early 1990s and instead made a turn towards winning elections, anti-fascist groups had to change their approach and focus on local issue-based campaigns against the BNP.
Conclusion
The campaign against the far right in Europe has reached a critical phase. Macron’s gamble of calling an early election was relatively successful in the short term. Le Pen’s project was set back, coming third, yet it has 142 seats – something unimaginable a decade ago. The tin can has just been kicked down the road – Le Pen’s sights are clearly set on the French Presidential elections in 2027.
In the UK, the Conservative Party was decimated in the general election; it now has just 121 seats (losing 252 MPs). But it is deeply divided between its traditional “one-nation conservative” grouping and those that include Suella Braverman who want to take the party in a more right-wing populist direction.
These tensions inside the Conservative Party are exacerbated by the rise of Farage and his Reform UK. It won five seats in the July general elections, with 14% of the vote; nationally 4 million people voted for this right-wing populist party.
Since the 1960s, Britain’s far right has made its most significant electoral gains when Labour was in office. That was true in the 1970s when the fascist National Front began to grow and in the first decade of this century when the BNP reached its electoral zenith.
As far as any revival of the far right goes, Britain may only be a few years behind Europe. The emergence of Reform UK and the revival of Tommy Robinson and his street thugs could be a pivot point for the far right in Britain.
Photos from left: Marine Le Pen and Giorgia Meloni who were jubilant when the polls results came in; Viktor Orbán whose Fidezs topped the polls in Hungary; Geert Wilders whose far-right PVV secured the second highest number of votesin the Netherlands.
Credit: Wilders photo, Prachatai
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