The weakening of democratic institutions has led to the rise of populism and the deterioration of liberal democracies
By Geetartha Pathak
US President Donald Trump’s second term has inspired visions of a global alliance of the far right, but his return to power has been a decidedly mixed blessing for the European faction. US Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference confirmed that the Trump administration’s worldview broadly matches that of his ideological kin in Europe. Both largely oppose Muslim immigrants, push back against pro-climate policy and target the rights of the LGBTQ community.
UN rights chief Volker Turk warned on February 25 of a return to an era of dictators, citing past atrocities such as indiscriminate attacks on civilians, population transfers and child labour. He urged urgent action to prevent such “very dangerous” events, cautioning that history could repeat itself.
Far-right Move
The record score achieved by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the recently held elections is a new boost for hard-right parties in Europe. The AfD, which was endorsed by senior figures in Trump’s administration, doubled its score in the legislative elections, reaching 20.8 per cent, behind the Christian Democrats, who ruled out forming a coalition government with them. The AfD has embraced a highly controversial policy called “remigration”, which it defines as deporting migrants who have committed crimes. But the term can also refer to mass deportation of migrants and their descendants.
UN rights chief Volker Turk warned of a return to an era of dictators, citing past atrocities such as indiscriminate attacks on civilians, population transfers and child labour
Germany’s conservatives in the last week of January sparked fury when their leader, Friedrich Merz, the country’s next chancellor, broke a longstanding pledge by relying on far-right votes to adopt a non-binding motion urging a drastic immigration crackdown. The leader of Alternative für Deutschland, Alice Weidel, hailed “a historic day for Germany” as the Bundestag, for the first time in its history, passed a vote with the backing of her party.
In France, controversial remarks by centrist Prime Minister, François Bayrou, about French people feeling “submerged” by immigration were hailed by the far-right National Rally as evidence that it had “won the ideological battle.”
“We’re in a vicious cycle,” said Tarik Abou-Chadi, an associate professor of European politics at the University of Oxford. “It starts with the radical right being more successful, winning more seats, entering government in more countries.” When that happens, he said, “mainstream parties move right on immigration. It is strategic, to win back votes.”
In Belgium, during the June 2024 legislative campaign, far-right Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) was predicted to win according to polls in Flanders, the most populated region. But the N-VA, party of Prime Minister Bart De Wever, eventually maintained its leadership. Belang’s party was excluded from government talks, even though the anti-immigration party made the largest gains in the June 2024 election and became the country’s second-largest party.
Religious Pluralism
Several multi-ethnic countries, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, where religious pluralism is part of the fabric of society, are witnessing the mainstreaming of far-right ideologies. In Asia, for example, several countries are seeing spikes of violence and intimidation against minorities. The common aspect is the desire to create a pure society based on a singular ethnic-religious identity whereby the minorities are considered outsiders or the “other.”
Such rhetoric echoes those used in Western countries by violent far-right groups and white supremacist extremists, who push acceleration theory to promulgate often-racist disinformation narratives and justify attacks on minorities they believe will eventually overtake their societies. In an era of artificial intelligence, unprecedented access to information — and disinformation, combined with instances of the use of counterterrorism legislation to suppress dissent and opposition, has exacerbated the threat.
In 2022, Giorgia Meloni’s neo-fascist Brothers of Italy party achieved a historic victory in parliamentary elections. Portugal’s far-right Chega (Enough) party strengthened its status as the country’s third political force, increasing its seats from 12 to 50 in the March 2024 legislative elections. In Britain, Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won after 14 years of Conservative rule. Anti-immigration party Reform UK led by Nigel Farage won just over 14 per cent of the vote and five seats in parliament.
Far-right Appeal
According to political theorists, the far-right appeals to those who believe in maintaining strict cultural and ethnic divisions and a return to traditional social hierarchies and values. In practice, far-right movements differ widely by region and historical context. In Western Europe, they have often focused on anti-immigration and anti-globalism, while in Eastern Europe, strong anti-communist rhetoric is more common.
The United States has seen a unique evolution of far-right movements that emphasise nativism and radical opposition to central government. Far-right politics have led to oppression, political violence, forced assimilation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide against groups of people based on their supposed inferiority or their perceived threat to the native ethnic group, nation, state, national religion, dominant culture or conservative social institutions.
In her book ‘Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right,’ Cynthia Miller-Idriss examines the far-right as a global movement and representing a cluster of overlapping antidemocratic, antiegalitarian, white supremacist beliefs that are “embedded in solutions like authoritarianism, ethnic cleansing or ethnic migration, and the establishment of separate ethno-states or enclaves along racial and ethnic lines”.
We can understand better the divisive communal politics and its impact on societies under the Hindu nationalist regime in India or the violent conflict that lasted more than 21 months in Manipur from Idris’ book.
Italian philosopher and political scientist Norberto Bobbio argues that attitudes towards equality are primarily what distinguish left-wing politics from right-wing on the political spectrum: “the Left considers the key inequalities between people to be artificial and negative, which should be overcome by an active state, whereas the right believes that inequalities between people are natural and positive, and should be either defended or left alone by the state.”
In a 1961 book deemed influential in the European far-right at large, French neo-fascist writer Maurice Bardèche introduced the idea that fascism could survive the 20th century under a new metapolitical guise adapted to the changes of the times. Sheri Berman, a Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University, is the author of scholarly books and articles on European social democracy, fascism, populism and the development of democracies and dictatorships.
She supports the idea that democracy, if unchecked by liberalism, can lead to populist — and in some regards dangerous — rule, but further says that liberal values unchecked by democracy can be just as dangerous, as she says, using historical examples, this can lead to oligarchic rule. Berman takes a different perspective on the role of populism and says that it is rather the weakening of democratic institutions that has led to the rise of populism and the deterioration of liberal democracies. The rise of the Modi-led populist government in India can be explained in terms of Berman’s concept.
In sum, Berman is trying to demonstrate that populism has led to the rise of illiberal democracies, while populism has gained traction as a result of democratic institutions being too elite-led.
