Far-right politics, once too extreme for Sweden, now finds a sturdy foundation

One after another, Europe’s traditional centre-right parties are facing a hard choice: when do they swallow their post-1945 scruples about fascism and agree to cooperate with their resident far-right ethno-nationalist parties?

Next stop: Sweden. Next week’s elections seem set to position the once-thought-too-extreme Swedish Democrats, now with more than 20% of the vote, as the major party on the right — leaving their more centrist right-wing colleagues having to get on board, as no Swedish Democrats means no right-wing government.

It’s a dilemma. Do they opt for democratic solidarity at the price of a continued Social Democratic government? Or for a “no enemies on the right” accord that legitimates the once-fringe post-fascist party that only broke into Parliament in 2010?

Just four years ago, in the 2018 campaign, the leading centre-right Moderates pledged not to accept support from Swedish Democrats. When the election result made their votes critical for a right-wing government, the Moderates attempted to pivot, but couldn’t persuade their traditional allies, the Liberals and Centre Party, to go along.

The result was a minority Social Democratic government with the passive support of other left and centre parties. It was only properly stabilised when it appointed the country’s first women prime minister, Magdalena Andersson.

Under the Swedish Democrats’ current leader, Jimmie Åkesson, the party has attempted to moderate its white supremacist image. But it retains the key culture war positionings of the ethno-nationalist right: hostile to immigration (and immigrants), tough on crime, climate sceptic, Euro-sceptic, and opposed to “special” rights for women or LGBTQIA+ individuals. 

Faced with the far-right’s continued rise, the Moderates, Liberals and the smaller Christian Democrats are this time running in collaboration with the Swedish Democrats, and the right’s anti-immigration policies are being absorbed into the mainstream.

Collaboration is leading to legitimation, further driving up the far-right’s support. Now Moderates leadership of the wing is under threat with polls indicating the Swedish Democrats could end up as the major party on the right, with a claim on the prime ministership.

It matters more than usual right now: the Swedish prime minister will become chair of the Council of European Union for the first half of 2023, when the continent could well be seeking to resolve the fallout from the war in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Italy is further down the path leading from collaboration to post-fascist legitimation. Silvio Berlusconi absorbed the former fringe fascist parties into his Forza Italia coalition. Now, broken out again as Fratelli d’Italia, their leader is on track to become prime minister of a right-wing coalition.

Polls for the election, scheduled for September 25, show Fratelli d’Italia on 24%, about as much combined as their two main allies, the Lega and the residual (and still Berlusconi-led) Forza Italia.

In Spain, the far-right Vox Party has already forced its way into a coalition with the traditional right-wing Partido Popular in the provincial government of Castilla y León, and is positioning itself as the right’s indispensable partner in the national elections scheduled for December next year.

In the United Kingdom, the more-Brexiter-than-thou leadership contest in the Conservative Party demonstrates yet again how the traditional party’s flirtation with the politics of the UK Independence Party has dragged the Tories to the anti-immigrant right.

The centre-right parties in Germany and France are among the few that continue to treat the far-right as unacceptable political partners. In Germany’s 2021 elections, the Alternative für Deutschland lost seats and was ignored in the post-election coalition negotiations.

Similarly in France, the traditional right parties backed Macron’s centrist La République En Marche! in the second round of this year’s parliamentary elections (although it looks like plenty of its voters ticked Le Pen’s Rassemblement National in the privacy of the polling booth).

Ireland, too, is an exception, where dissatisfaction with the traditional parties has seen a switch to the left, with Sinn Féin surging to the top of the vote in the 2020 elections (and well ahead in current polling) forcing an unlikely coalition between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, overcoming their 100-year civil war split.

The Australian conservatives’ on-again-off-again affair with right-wing populist parties like One Nation and the United Australia Party is a faint echo of the European right’s embrace of populist nationalism. So far, they have tried to steal their policies and harvest their preferences, while, publicly at least, keeping the parties at arm’s length.

So far that’s prevented a breakthrough legitimation. But country by country, Europe is demonstrating that there’s a more dangerous alternative.