Far-right populist Geert Wilders won a “monster victory” in the Netherlands’ general election yesterday, shocking the nation and the rest of Europe.
The 60-year-old politician leads the right-wing Party for Freedom (PVV), which ran on an anti-immigration and anti-Islam platform and took 37 seats in the election, more than any other party.
The result, which more than doubled his party’s previous share, puts Wilders, dubbed the “Dutch Trump,” in a favorable position for upcoming coalition talks with the half-dozen or so other parties that hold a significant number of seats.
But with his harsh rhetoric he has angered almost all other political parties in the Netherlands.
While Wilders faces an uphill battle as he tries to woo other Dutch parties to form a government and become the Netherlands’ first far-right leader, his surprise success is the latest in a series of political surprises experienced by the far right The parties have made great progress across Europe in recent years.
Here Web takes a look at the meteoric rise of the right-wing extremists in Europe in recent years.
Geert Wilders (pictured) leads the right-wing Party for Freedom (PVV), which ran on an anti-immigration and anti-Islam platform
ITALY: Brothers of Italy with avowed Nazi connections won last year’s election
Giorgia Meloni’s “Brothers of Italy” party took power in Italy at the end of 2022 and has enjoyed consistently high ratings ever since.
Aggregate polling data shows there has been no significant decline in support since the party, which has been accused of being neo-fascist in its policies and ideology, came to power.
In speeches by Meloni, Italy’s first female leader, she openly expressed her harsh views on immigration and homosexuality.
She has spoken outwardly about fighting what she called “the gay lobby,” while her deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, called gay parents “unnatural.”
Speeches by Gioegia Meloni, Italy’s first female leader (pictured center), openly expressed her harsh views on immigration and homosexuality
Meloni also had to deny that her party was fascist, even though it was the direct successor of the Italian Social Movement, a neo-fascist party active between 1945 and 1995.
Your government has taken a tough stance on immigration. Earlier this year, it passed measures to give Italian authorities the power to detain migrants for up to 18 months and ordered the construction of new centers to house them.
The reforms followed a surge of over 10,000 migrants landing on the small Italian island of Lampedusa, more than there are residents there.
The new measures should be combined with a plan to combat the flow of migrants to Italy through increased surveillance of the seas around Italy.
HUNGARY: Viktor Orban has won his fourth consecutive term
Viktor Orban (pictured) is known on the world stage for his support of Russia and yesterday threatened to block all EU aid to Ukraine
Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party has long been accused of representing “soft fascism” and “soft autocracy.”
But this stance appears to be working for him, as last year his party won 117 seats in the Hungarian National Assembly, once again running on a Eurosceptic and anti-immigrant platform.
He is also known for his support of Russia on the world stage and yesterday threatened to block all EU aid to Ukraine and the country’s possible entry into the bloc unless EU members agreed to a review of the support strategy for Kiev.
The Fidesz-led government is accused of silencing media outlets that dare to criticize the party and curating state media outlets that are “completely loyal” to Orban.
In 2021, it was revealed that Orban had approved the use of Pegasus, a surveillance tool, to target political opponents.
The phone numbers of at least 10 lawyers, five journalists and an opposition politician were included in a leaked list of potential surveillance targets.
His government has also been accused of putting its finger on the scales of justice by removing independent judges and filling top courts with loyal judges.
FRANCE: Le Pen’s National Rally party is set to succeed Macron in 2027
National Rally, the party led by Marine Le Pen (pictured left), is repeatedly accused of using anti-immigration rhetoric to flirt with overt racism
Her party is expected to take power in France in the 2027 parliamentary elections
Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement Nationale (NR), the former National Front, will take power in France in the 2027 general election after narrowly defeating Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche! has lost. (EM) party last year.
Macron’s approval rating has fallen steadily since last year’s spring election and currently stands at just 29%.
His disapproval rate is now at 69%, the fourth time in six years that his negative reviews have topped 65%.
Meanwhile, polls from earlier this year showed that 24% of French voters would vote for NR, while 22% of voters would vote for EM.
Le Pen’s NR party has taken advantage of growing anti-immigrant sentiment in France.
Today it was revealed that 66% of French citizens believe that immigration from outside Europe poses a threat to France.
They are repeatedly accused of flirting with open racism with anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Last year, far-right and NR MP Grégoire de Fournas was suspended from the French parliament after he told a black fellow MP to “go back to Africa”.
Fournas was also given a two-month pay cut, the maximum penalty for parliamentary misconduct.
It is only the second time in the history of France’s Fifth Republic, founded by Charles de Gaulle in 1958, that a lawmaker has received such a rebuke.
Le Pen strongly condemned the comments while stressing that he was defending the party’s line, which promised to stop all illegal immigration.
GERMANY: Far-right party with alleged Nazi ties caused a stir in state elections
Daniel Halemba (pictured) was suspended from the party after being arrested on suspicion of possessing Nazi symbols
He was arrested after officers discovered Nazi insignia and racist documents in his home
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) also won the most recent state elections in October by a landslide, achieving its largest share of the vote ever in the powerful state of Hesse.
The party was also able to win a significant share of the vote in Bavaria, achieving an additional 4.4% of the state’s vote share.
About a quarter of the German population lives in Hesse and Bavaria.
Alice Weidel, the co-chair of the AfD, said the gains were an important milestone for the far-right party and showed that “the AfD is no longer an eastern phenomenon, but has become a major pan-German party.” So, we’ve arrived .
The party pursues anti-Islam and anti-immigrant policies. In 2017, party founder Alexander Gauland explicitly promised to fight a “foreign invasion.”
He also attempted to trivialize the period in which the Nazi Party ruled Germany, claiming that it was “just a speck of bird droppings in more than 1,000 years of successful German history.”
While the party has resisted comparisons with the Nazi Party, a newly elected AfD lawmaker was suspended from the party in late October after he was arrested on suspicion of possessing Nazi symbols.
22-year-old Daniel Halemba, the youngest politician ever elected to the Bavarian state parliament, is currently in custody after officials discovered Nazi insignia and racist documents in his home.
His neighbors also complained that they heard shouts of “Sieg Heil” coming from his house.
GREECE: After a disappointing election for the left, new right-wing extremist parties have entered the Greek parliament for the first time
The Spartans party was supported by Ilias Kasidiaris, who is currently serving a 13-year prison sentence for membership in a criminal organization as a former leading member of the Golden Dawn
This year’s national elections marked the first time that two far-right parties entered the Greek political stage.
The Spartans Party and the Niki or Victory Party together took 21 of the 200 seats in the Greek Parliament in June.
The Spartans party was supported by Ilias Kasidiaris, who is currently serving a 13-year prison sentence for membership in a criminal organization as a former leading member of the Golden Dawn – a political party of neo-Nazi origins that has been implicated in several violent street attacks.
Niki, on the other hand, is a rare party that represents ultra-Orthodox beliefs and aims to promote and “preserve” Greek identity through its language, history and tradition.
Niki is staunchly anti-abortion and sex education and has a deep antipathy towards the LGBTQ community and same-sex marriage.
Many of the party’s candidates have been accused of ties to Russia in this year’s election.
Theoharakis also admitted that he has not been vaccinated against COVID-19.
SWEDEN: Fringe anti-Islam parties were the kingmakers in the 2022 election
The Sweden Democrats were happy with the concessions made to them, which fed into the party’s core anti-immigration and anti-Islam messages
The Sweden Democrats managed to reach an agreement with the Moderate Party in the 2022 election, laying the foundation for the formation of a government.
The new government was forced to give a lot to the fringe party and, as part of the deal with the Democrats, planned to cut taxes, start building new nuclear power plants, limit social benefits, tighten immigration regulations and give more powers to the police.
The new administration also made it harder for new immigrants to receive benefits, while replacing the foreign aid spending target of 1% of GDP with a fixed amount.
The Sweden Democrats were pleased with the concessions, which were reflected in the party’s core anti-immigration and anti-Islam messages.
The party’s leader, Jimmie Åkesson, said last year that most of Sweden’s deficits and the reasons for his party’s good performance were due to the country’s overly friendly immigration policy, which had failed to integrate “new Swedes” into the country .
“For us Sweden Democrats… a change of power must also mean a paradigm shift in immigration and integration policy,” Åkesson said at the time.
SWITZERLAND: The anti-immigration party, which promised to cap the population at 10 million, won by a wide margin in October elections
The SVP program included a promise to keep Switzerland’s population, currently 8.7 million, below 10 million
The latest success story for the European far right came late last month after the Swiss Eurosceptic and hardliner Swiss People’s Party (SVP) managed to secure nine additional seats in the country’s House of Representatives, bringing the total to 62 to 200 seats.
However, the party lost a seat in the Senate, Switzerland’s upper house.
The SVP, which won 27.9% of the vote in October’s elections, ran a strict anti-immigration campaign and promised that there would be “less political correctness”.
Her platform included a promise to keep Switzerland’s population, currently 8.7 million, below 10 million.
The party managed to appeal to anti-immigrant sentiment in Switzerland in a campaign that many condemned as outright xenophobic.
Switzerland recorded a 43% increase in asylum applications in the first half of 2023 and has also accepted 65,000 Ukrainian refugees since Russia’s invasion, despite its long-standing policy of neutrality on the world stage.
The SVP also declared war on “Cancel Culture”, “Gender Terror” and “Wake Madness”.
AUSTRIA: The anti-immigration party that shared a video of the youth wing under Hitler’s balcony will win next year’s elections
In Austria, the right-wing Freedom Party (FP) under Herbert Kickl is continuously increasing its share of the vote and has been ahead of all other parties since November 2022
The Eurosceptic party has always advocated an anti-immigrant platform with a focus on “preserving” Austrian culture
Earlier this year, Austria’s longest-serving spy chief warned that the country could be threatened by Russia if it comes to power in next year’s elections
In Austria, the right-wing Freedom Party (FP), led by Herbert Kickl, has steadily increased its vote share and has been ahead of all other parties since November 2022, according to poll data compiled by Politico.
The FPÖ currently has a 5% lead over its closest rival, the Austrian Social Democratic Party, and is expected to win next year’s elections.
The Eurosceptic party has always advocated an anti-immigrant platform with a focus on “preserving” Austrian culture.
The party was so serious that it pledged to subsidize restaurants serving typical Austrian dishes and forced schoolchildren to speak only German in playgrounds.
Earlier this year, the party released a promotional video created by its youth wing that cut up the image of the burning Notre Dame Church in Paris with conspiratorial phrases related to the debunked Great Replacement theory, which suggests that white Europeans are being replaced by non-white migrants would be replaced.
The video showed members of the party’s youth wing taking part in torchlight parades and standing under the Vienna balcony where Adolf Hitler gave his infamous speech as he triumphantly returned to his homeland after the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938.
Critics also accused the FPÖ of having ties to Russia, which was even confirmed by the Russian secret services.
Earlier this year, Austria’s longest-serving spy chief warned that the country could be threatened by Russia if it comes to power in next year’s elections because it has not severed its ties with the Putin-led nation.
Peter Gridling, who headed the Austrian intelligence agency BVT between 2008 and 2020, told the Financial Times: “We were very concerned about the Freedom Party’s contacts with Russia.”
‘[We investigated how] Russia could finance them and offer them jobs. . . How [the party] would host these roundtables and spread purely Russian propaganda.’
“They haven’t changed. They still have contact with Russia. “Intelligence is a long game – and the Russians have a very long-term perspective.”
SLOVAKIA: Ultranationalist party helped form government in 2023 elections
While the Slovak National Party (SNP) only received 5.6% of the vote in this year’s national elections, it managed to be part of a three-party coalition government formed in October after failing to even make it into parliament in 2020.
The party, founded in 1990, is accused of spreading anti-Roman and anti-Hungarian rhetoric.
The European Center for Roma Rights, which campaigned to promote the Roma population in Europe, said of the SNP: “Members of this party have repeatedly and regularly expressed to the public their contempt and hostility towards a number of groups in Slovakia, including ethnic groups, expressed and sexual minorities.’
She accused the SNP of playing “a very important role in worsening relations between Roma and non-Roma in Slovakia and stoking deep-rooted anti-Roma sentiment in that country”.
Former SNP leader Ján Slota, once called Jozef Tiso, the former president of Slovakia who was hanged for allowing Nazi Germany’s use of the country in World War II, was “one of the greatest sons of the Slovak nation” .