The Trump victory in the United States and the success of the Brexit vote for Britain to leave the European Union have been key to Le Pen’s popularity, in her view. Given her positions on limiting immigration and her tough anti-Islamic stance, Le Pen’s support has remained high throughout the wave of terror attacks in France and Europe over the past year.
“The whole world — it’s true of Brexit and it’s true for Mr. Trump — is waking up to what we’ve been saying for years,’’ Le Pen said this week.
In the Netherlands, the far-right Freedom Party candidate Geert Wilders has surged to a lead in opinion polls only weeks before the March 15 election. Nicknamed the Dutch Trump, Wilders is running an aggressively nationalistic campaign stressing toughness against Islamic extremism, tight immigration and border controls and opposition to EU institutions.
In recent days, Wilders has announced his support for Trump’s temporary ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries. He also indicated in an interview with Sky News, that if he wins (a long-shot given the Dutch political system of coalition rule) he will call for a referendum similar to the Brexit vote.
“I would like the Dutch to be in charge of their own immigration policy, their own financial policy, their own budget policy – like the United Kingdom decided last year,” Wilders asserted. Following the Brexit vote in June 2016, some in Europe raised the specter of a broader exit from the EU triggered by the British, particularly in light of the rise of Euro-skeptic parties in recent years.
Led by Frauke Petry, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has also been expanding its influence ahead of the federal elections on September 24. The party was originally founded as a Euro-skeptic party, concerned over the German-led bailout of numerous European countries after the Euro crisis. In recent year’s AfD has shifted its identity and expanded its base of support on growing fears of threats posed by immigrants, particularly Muslim immigrants, let into the country under Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open migration policy.
The rising popularity of each far-right party has been closely connected to growing anxiety among Europeans at large in the wake of the grisly terror attacks of recent years, as well as the high numbers of asylum seekers coming from the Middle East and Northern Africa to resettle in Europe. Internal border control among EU members is largely directed by the bureaucracy in Brussels, fueling many complaints about the EU bureaucracy. Populist candidates have effectively stoked existing concerns over border security, immigration, and economic discontentment, issues that have boiled to the surface and could overflow during the upcoming 2017.
“I certainly think 2017 is going to be a key year to watch given the many elections coming up across major western European countries including France, the Netherlands, and Germany, and later the Czech Republic,” said Alina Polyakova, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “If we see somebody like a populist leader come to be head of state, which hasn’t happened in Europe so far, it could have profound and detrimental consequences for the EU and also for the transatlantic relationship.”
Those consequences stem from the way the populist right-wing parties are fundamentally challenging the very structure of the European Union. Many supporters of these parties were on board for the anti-Brussels Euro-skeptic movement, which was one of the driving forces behind the Brexit referendum.
If someone like Marine Le Pen wins the French presidential election, Polyakova anticipates one of her first moves will be to call for a referendum on French membership in the European Union, like the Brexit vote.
“Something like a Frexit I think would be absolutely detrimental to France and the EU,” Polyakova argued, explaining that unlike Britain, France is deeply integrated historically, financially, culturally in the EU structure. “I don’t see the EU surviving if a country like France exits the Union.”
Many of the promises of Europe’s populists echo the campaign of President Trump, particularly where it concerns immigration and taking countries “back” to a better national identity, culture, and sense of security. Those promises are difficult to fulfill under existing EU conventions, like the Schengen agreement allows for the free movement of people within 26 EU states. Additionally, fears over a loss of cultural identity have been seen in recent years as a handful of European countries, including France, have banned certain religious garb, like the burqa.
Polyakova noted that the terror attacks of recent years have definitely been feeding the populist agenda. “It’s not just about immigration anymore, which has been one of their pillars for a long time. Now it’s about the intersection of immigration and security, which I think speaks to peoples fears and anxieties in a much more profound way,” she said.
Regardless of numerous studies showing that immigrants and refugees commit fewer crimes and fewer acts of terrorism than native-born citizens, the narrative is persuasive. “Statistics don’t really matter. It’s about the psychological connection,” Polyakova explained. When a person watches a deadly terror attack unfold on the news and sees an individual of Middle Eastern or North African origin shouting Arabic slogans before committing an atrocity, the psychological impact can assume a life of its own.
“The imagery and the scapegoating is certainly useful for the populist agenda,” she said.
With only weeks until the first major European election of 2017, a single incident, like the Friday attack at the Louvre, will not change the overall trajectory of the U.S. and much of Europe, warned Daniel Chirot, professor of international studies and sociology at the University of Washington in Seattle.
“The anti-immigrant, so-called populist sentiments in the U.S. or Europe are more than just about fear of terrorism, but are part of a major, generalized fear of cultural and national decline,” he said.
As they have gained support, transatlantic populists have exploited fears and myths about numerous groups, Chirot explained. Not just Muslims, but immigrants from Eastern Europe, portrayed much like Mexicans in the U.S. under Trump, have been blamed for the loss of jobs and declining wages among the working class, as was clearly the case during the Brexit campaign.
The Friday attack in Paris is now believed to have been carried out by an Egyptian who arrived in France in January. The assailant was trying to enter the museum shops carrying two bags and wielding a machete and reportedly shouting Allahu Akbar (God is greatest). He was shot five times by a soldier guarding the entrance to the Louvre, a security precaution that has become increasingly common since the country was put under a state of national emergency following the November 2015 Paris nightclub attacks.
President Trump responded to the attack on his personal Twitter feed, announcing the attack was carried out by a “radical Islamist terrorist.” He warned, “France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.” In the past week, Trump has implemented the first in a series of promised border security measures to temporarily halt immigration and travel from a handful of Muslim countries, and the beginning steps to constructing a border wall with Mexico, to keep illegal immigrants out of the country.
Chirot warned of the trend in Europe and the United States of viewing various groups as “useful scapegoats for the anxiety of many, especially older people who see their world being upended.”
“In their mind this justifies abandoning the open, tolerant Enlightenment values that have made the United States and Western Europe great,” Chirot said. “As this is abandoned, we are ceasing to be models for the rest of the world, and of course threatening our own freedoms.”
