0:00      Kay Summers: Hi, this is Kay Summers, the host of Big World. Just a note about the episode you're about to hear. We recorded this episode with Professor Garret Martin just before the German government's announcement on January 25th that it will provide Ukraine with Leopard tanks, and approve requests by other countries to do the same. In this episode, we talk about the United Kingdom and Poland pressuring Germany to approve the use of Leopard tanks in Ukraine, but this story has developed since recording. Thank you and enjoy the episode. From the School of International Service, at American University in Washington, this is Big World, where we talk about something in the world that truly matters. The continent we know today as Europe and the countries within it have been the site of every conceivable type of government over thousands of years, from tribal to monarchy, and from totalitarian dictatorship to representative democracy. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union that followed, the governments of Europe have mainly been associated with democracy. But the landscape has been changing with the elections of far-right politicians in countries from Poland to Sweden. And as of 2020, Freedom House no longer considers Hungary a democracy.

1:18      KS: Today, we're talking about right-wing nationalism in Europe, what it is and what it means for the future of democracy. I'm Kay Summers and I'm joined by Garret Martin. Garret is a professor here at the School of International Service and he's co-director of SIS's Transatlantic Policy Center. He's written widely on transatlantic relations in Europe, both in the field of history and contemporary affairs, and focuses on security, NATO, European politics, and European foreign policy and defense. He's a frequent media commentator on NPR, the BBC, CNN, Voice of America and USA Today, and he's the perfect person to help us figure all this out. Garret, thanks for joining Big World.

1:59      Garret Martin: Thank you.

2:00      KS: Garret, whenever we spend a whole episode talking about a really specific and controversial word or term, I like to make sure we've defined how we intend to use it. So first off, please tell me how you would define far-right or right-wing nationalism, and tell me how far-right nationalism is different from a type of conservatism that exists within accepted democratic norms.

2:27      GM: Well, it probably won't be very surprising that I'm going to start by saying that it's quite complicated to come up with a clear definition. That's a very academic start so I have to apologize to our listeners. But it's important to keep in mind that yes, there's far-right nationalism present in Europe, but it is a global phenomenon, and that's important. And even within Europe, there are different flavors, different subtleties to it. But I would say maybe a couple of points that are generally common, I would say, for far-right sort of nationalist parties is tends to be nativist, okay? That's important. Tends to be somewhat authoritarian in its outlook. Tends to have strong attitudes in terms of being opposed to immigration.

3:14      GM: Now, within those broader ideological elements, there are differences. You do have more extreme movements that are really opposed to democracy and democratic processes, full stop, whereas you might have more radical movements on the right that are nonetheless at least accept the trappings or some elements of democracy in particular, the electoral process. Within that though, however, there might be opposed to certain elements of liberal democracy, the protection of minority rights, pluralism, and so forth. They might chafe at the constraints, the checks and balances presented by the media or by the courts. So not too dissimilar to what we might have seen in the United States at times in recent years.

4:02      GM: I would also say, which to add a little bit of a further element of nuance and complexity here, is that these parties tend to be quite ideologically opportunistic. They've been very happy at times to embrace policies that we would traditionally associate maybe with the left, economic or protectionist policies in the field of economics. A real commitment, at times, to the welfare state, repackaged, adapted to that nativist message, but nonetheless, policy that we made traditionally associate with the left. So it's quite a mix of parties that tend to adapt to local flavors and local circumstances.

4:49      GM: As to the element, I didn't want to forget about the difference between maybe mainstream conservative parties and those, I think one key element here is that in terms of the policies, in terms of the discourse, what we have seen in the last 20 to 30 years is very often the mainstream conservative parties have tended to at least adopt the rhetoric and sometimes policies that seem to be inspired by the other parties of the far-right. I think in terms of immigration in particular, the types of discourse, the type of framing of immigration as a threat, a challenge, sometimes even using the word invasion, we've seen that happen a lot. So that, I think, has blurred the difference between the two. But otherwise, I would say mainstream conservative parties do try to present themselves as more respectable. They tend to have government experience, they tend to have to be in those positions where you have to make compromise and make policy.

5:52      KS: So Garret, we're going to touch down on a few different places in Europe, and I want to start by talking about a place that you know very well, the United Kingdom. What is your take on the recent political turmoil in the Conservative Party, specifically the fall, rapid fall of the six-week Prime Minister Liz Truss and the election of Rishi Sunak. And within that, is it time to amend the way that the UK is choosing their leaders?

6:17      GM: That's a hard question. It's a difficult question. It's true that there was always the possibility in the parliamentary system in the United Kingdom to remove a Prime Minister if that person loses the confidence of their fellow members of parliament or the broader party per se, that was always an option. It was used in the past. That happened essentially to Margaret Thatcher in 1990, but it was still quite rare. I think what we've seen in the last couple of years is really the repercussions of Brexit. Brexit dramatically changed UK society, UK politics. It also dramatically changed the internal dynamics of the parties, and in particular the Conservative Party.

7:04      GM: So I think what we're seeing that is the repercussions from that element because let's not forget that Boris Johnson also had to resign and was essentially pushed out by his own party members. So I think we're still dealing with that internal turmoil and the fact that the Conservative Party is so divided that any one individual can't necessarily capture the attention and support of all of its different factions.

7:30      KS: And we are going to continue the tour of Europe going to Sweden. This past September, the opposition right-wing bloc won a majority of seats in Sweden's parliament, the Riksdag, ousting the ruling center-left bloc from power. One of the right-wing political parties in this bloc, the Sweden Democrats, has roots in the Neo-Nazi and white supremacist fringe. So what is your take on Sweden and others that might be considered the titans of European democracy shifting right in this way?

8:01      GM: Yeah. I think Sweden is a very interesting example because there's a lot of contradictory elements to it in a way. It can't be easily encapsulated in a soundbite here, I would say. I think the first element is the switch from the results of 2018 to 2022 were quite minor. If I'm not mistaken, the left bloc lost two seats. The right bloc gained two seats, but that was enough to make a difference. So it was very tight four years ago. It has remained very tight today. The second complicating factor is that the... I know it's complicated terminology. We have the Sweden Democrats, which are the far-right, and then we have the Social Democrats, which are the center-left. They're still, by far, the biggest party and actually increased the number of votes, I think, from 28 to 30%.

8:56      KS: The Social Democrats?

8:57      GM: Yes.

8:58      KS: Okay.

8:58      GM: So they were still the largest party, but

9:00      GM: Some of their partners fared badly, and that was enough to tip the balance. So as to what it means for the Sweden Democrats, it's also a picture I think, of a steady increase. They've become solidly, slowly but surely, a figure anchored in the Swedish political landscape. They only had about 5% of the votes in 2010, and they've quasi-quadrupled that basically in little over a decade. They've been able to make inroads over different reasons. I think one big element was the large immigration refugee crisis of 2015.

9:40      KS: Right.

9:40      GM: That was definitely a theme that they've played a lot. I think you absolutely also right to emphasize the history, the roots of Neo-Nazism, but the Sweden Democrats have done what we've seen a lot of other populist parties, especially the ones that have become more prominent in the last 20 years, they've tried to sort of sanitize. They've tried to clean up a little bit. They've tried to remove the obvious links to a Nazi past. They've tried to be a bit more slick. They're better organized. They've tried to limit the obvious examples of xenophobia while keeping a lot of the sort of core message of being anti-immigration, defending Swedish values. You can't see my inverted commas here, but I'm doing them sort of virtually. So I think that's been important. That they at least have been able to try and clean up, at least on the surface. Whether it's real, whether it's more symbolic than meaningful is a different question.

10:48      KS: We're going to focus on Hungary and Poland for a few minutes. In June 2020, Polish president Andrzej Duda won reelection on an anti-LGBTQ platform, and in September 2022, the EU Parliament declared Hungary under President Viktor Orbán to no longer be a full democracy. Yet both countries are embraced by American conservatives or American Republicans as stars in Europe. What effect do you think American support, good or bad, has on European politics, I guess in general, but then also in the cases of politicians like these?

11:26      GM: Well, I wouldn't say it has a dramatic impact in one respect. I mean, Viktor Orbán did not await the approval or the seal of approval from Tucker Carlson to decide that it was a good idea to rewrite the rules or the constitution to his benefit. Orbán has been doing this for well over a decade since he came into office in 2010. He's very methodical. He's trained as a lawyer. He's patient. He's really used the weapon of the law to a fuller extent or the fullest extent, to try and have rules that will favor his party to make it difficult for the opposition to unite or to provide a viable counterweight. He's been able to methodically go over sets of institutions, whether the media, whether the courts, using a system of economic patronage to favor his friends and to punish opponents. So all of that's been going on for years.

12:32      GM: I would say what's maybe from Orbán's perspective, I would assume that nonetheless, it's still helpful for his internal prestige to be the focal point or to be praised by the media of the United States, or at least part of it. It still is something for someone who has great aspirations Orbán, to punch above his weight, which is Hungary is still a small to medium size European power, but I think he does have outside ambitions. So I think he does like that. I think he does appreciate. I think it's helpful for him also to show that he's not entirely isolated.

13:09      KS: Right.

13:10      GM: He's certainly been widely criticized by many other European actors, by the European institutions. So showing that he does have friends and support elsewhere and especially in the United States is helpful as a sort of counter narrative at home as well.

13:27      KS: Poland and Hungary have each been key examples of some democratic backsliding in Europe, but they're not exactly the same. As you said, all these countries are different. They respond to different interests. In the case of the war in Ukraine, for example, the responses of Poland and Hungary have been different. How is the war in Ukraine creating tension specifically between Poland and Hungary?

13:49      GM: Yeah, it's a good question I think, because it really emphasizes this element that although we talk about these populist or far-right nationalist parties as having quite a bit in common, and there certainly are elements of their platforms that are similar. There's a little bit of a copycat phenomenon too, that they look at what each other does, and they might emulate some communication approaches or some strategies, but there's also a degree to which history and experience very much shapes their attitudes, especially towards foreign policy.

14:21      KS: Right.

14:22      GM: Poland, for obvious historical reasons, has rather strong feelings, strong negative feelings towards Russia that well predate even the invasion this year. And Poland has very much been on the forefront of a more hawkish line within the West, within the EU when it comes to sanctions, when it comes to trying and punish and weaken Russia.

14:46      KS: Right.

14:47      GM: Orbán, however, has not. Okay. Quite the opposite. If you look at it as a spectrum, he's been far more lenient towards Putin. He's been very critical of adding more sanctions. He's been urging the need for negotiations or talks, and this matters because if this rift was to increase between Warsaw and Budapest, between Poland and Hungary, that could take away what was in the past a very important cover for Orbán and for Hungary when it came to facing sanctions from the EU. A lot of the most important tools, not all of them, but some of them really require unanimous support against the offending country. So in other words, those two were really providing cover for each other. If that rift was to really deepen, it's not a guarantee that Poland might not throw Hungary under the bus,

15:44      KS: Right.

15:44      GM: If it can serve its own interests and vice versa, of course.

15:55      KS: Garret Martin, it's time to Take Five. This is when you, our guest, get to daydream out loud and reorder the world as you'd like it to be by single-handedly instituting five policies or practices that would change the world for the better. For our conversation today, what are five ways in which Europeans, whether officially as in with the European Union or unofficially at the individual citizen level, can act to safeguard democracy?

16:21      GM: I would say one, I think the first one I would emphasize, and this really I think speak maybe at the grassroots level, is the importance of civic participation, of political participation, which is not just about voting. I think that's something which I think we've seen, which I think has been healthy, is even when we have had a narrative of more populists in roads, in a number of European countries, we have often seen responses in the streets through street protests, forms of organizations, and I think that is an important counterpoint. I think one example, which I think is fascinating is in the city of Bologna, I believe in Italy, you had this movement called the Sardines, which was a grassroots movement that came up to try and provide an alternative, a counter to some of the Italian populous forces. So I think that civil society angle is crucially important.

17:19      GM: The second one, I would say to sort of zoom up at the higher level, is really the importance of the EU taking rule of law erosion seriously. They've developed those new tools to really start using funds and the pocketbook to punish democratic backsliders, but I think they need to show a real commitment, a real seriousness, if that tool is to be effective. If that gets rapidly diluted or watered down, or negotiated down, I think that's very deflating and the message that it sends to other leaders who might be tempted to

18:00      GM: engage in actions of democratic backsliding or undermining the rule of law will not be positive. So I think that is going to be also important. Thirdly, and this is not specific to Europe, I think it's a challenge across the world, but if we want to be able to safeguard democracy, it has to be a fact-based discussion. Okay? It has to be based on honest disagreements based around evidence and facts. And so I think it's going to be particularly important at the national level and at the European level to develop the tools to combat disinformation, to compel, encourage, coax, big tech companies to take that role seriously of not enabling or facilitating the propagation of this information because that has, I think, a toxic impact on the quality of public discourse.

18:57      GM: Fourthly, I do think that it's important as well for all political forces to not simply relinquish certain areas of discussion to certain political forces. We may not like, or you may not like, what a populist party on the right or nationalist party on the right says about immigration, but I don't think we can pretend that that topic is not salient for certain people, that it's not a cause for concern. It might not be a fair source of concern. It might be more perception than reality, but the purpose of politics is to be able to listen to constituents and to be able to deliver.

19:39      GM: And that connects me a little bit, maybe I'm cheating a little bit, but I think my fifth point is that you have to be able, even despite the fragmentation, even despite the political adversity, we need governments to be able to deliver and to deliver in a manner that is equitable and it's not limited to certain areas. What we've seen in parts of Europe, I'm thinking in France where I grew up, is that there's been a real tension between urban areas that have really concentrated economic growth and economic recovery and certain areas that are more or less behind, more peripheral. And so the abilities to be able to be seen to deliver for those areas and not for just the booming metropolis, I think is going to be particularly important because those left behind areas are not the only source of support for populist nationalist groups, but they're certainly a crucial one.

20:41      KS: Looking again at the war in Ukraine, it's obviously having seismic global impacts, but I wonder how it's affecting the landscape of relationships among countries in Europe, especially when you layer it over this right word shift that we're seeing. I read today, as we're recording this on January 13th, that the UK and Poland are pressuring Germany to approve the use of Leopard tanks, which Germany manufactures, pressuring Germany to approve the use of these tanks in Ukraine, which is a different set of allies on a question than you might normally see, the UK and Poland versus Germany. How do you see the war in Ukraine layering over the top of this rightward shift in Europe, and what additional complexities is it adding to relationships among the European countries, aside from only Poland and Hungary? How is this war complicating an already complicated picture?

21:36      GM: It certainly is, it certainly is. I would say one element which has been important has been a sense that the center of gravity of Europe and the center of gravity of the EU has moved a little bit east, especially in the first couple of months of the war. What I mean by that is that historically the EU and the European institutions were really dominated or historically driven by the Franco-German partnership. These were kind of the heart of it. And with the war in Ukraine, with Russia's aggression, you have a number of countries which in the past had essentially been warning about Russia, had been suggesting that others were being too complacent. And looking in particular towards Germany, there's a little bit of, "I told you so," happening. So I think that's one element here.

22:27      GM: The geopolitical importance of frontline states like Poland and others who are the closest to Ukraine or the Baltic States, certainly rose up at that moment. But it remains the case that there are still historical, cultural, geopolitical differences between the European states as to how to treat Russia in the future. There is still what one could call a Russia question that will need to be addressed, solved in the future, no matter when this conflict ends. This will not be the end of those discussions.

23:06      GM: The second element is the fact that in the past before the war, in the recent past, there was a lot of focus within the EU of the need to take stronger actions towards the erosion of the rule of law, towards democratic backsliding. There have been a number of initiatives that have been leveled against Hungary and Poland in particular. The question is because of Poland's importance now as a frontline state and its active role, will there be sort of pragmatic looking the other way of some of these violations or some of these actions not keeping in the spirit? Are there going to have to be some difficult, pragmatic decisions on the part of the EU institutions and key actors? That remains to be seen, but I think it's certainly of the realm of the possible.

24:01      KS: As we said at the beginning, nationalism is a really fraught term. It's got a lot of negative connotations. You very nicely tried to lay out a really complicated concept. It's impossible not to note that this term is especially troubling when we talk about Europe. The specter of World War II, which has come up a couple of times here, is always present. And in September 2022, the radical-right political party Brothers of Italy won an absolute majority in the Italian Parliament, and subsequently its leader, Giorgia Meloni, was elected Prime Minister. So we're touching down in Italy now. This new government has been described as, "The most far-right government since the fascist era of Benito Mussolini," which is a terrifying description. What is your take on this description and what do you think realistically we should expect to see from the Meloni government in Italy?

24:56      GM: Again, I think there's some elements of complexity here. There are undoubtedly deep concerns that you have such a large support for a very rightward coalition. I think that's definitely troubling. The fact that Giorgia Meloni has downplayed or said a lot of very complimentary quotes about Benito Mussolini in the past should not reassure someone as well. But in this matter, I think there are structural institutional reasons or obstacles that could help to limit some of the damage that could be done. And I think this matters in a general sense. What we see in Hungary stands out because a lot of these checks and balances have essentially withered away or been completely destroyed. In other cases, they continue to be there. I think in Poland, we have a problematic government, but they're still a very strong civil society. We've seen a lot of large social protests, and we do have an opposition that still is relatively strong.

26:02      GM: So coming back to Italy, what's fascinating, and this is something about Italian politics in the last 30 years, is that parties seem to rise up very quickly and then fade again, and that happens all the time. Just to give you a quick example, in 2013, La Lega, the party of Matteo Salvini, which was sort of a party representing northern Italy, went from 4% to 18% in the space of five years and then backed down to 8% in the last elections. Giorgia Meloni, I believe, only had about 4% or 5% four years ago, and now have shot up to 26%. So there's a huge amount of volatility in Italian politics.

26:45      KS: Right.

26:46      GM: Coalitions have not really been able to last very long, which essentially limits their abilities to either implement useful policies or to cause meaningful

27:00      GM: damage. So I think that volatility, instability in Italian politics does provide a bit of a counterweight. So Meloni is going to have to manage her coalition partners, Matteo Salvini in particular, and Silvio Berlusconi who's ever there, ever there in Italian politics. And on certain key issues, whether their attitudes towards EU, towards Putin and the war in Ukraine or economic policy, there are some important differences. So it's going to be a challenge, I think, for Meloni to be able to keep this coalition together and not have it collapse, therefore probably triggering new elections.

27:39      GM: She also has a delicate balancing act when it comes to the EU. She has been critical of the EU in the past, but Italy faces significant public debt. It has significant economic challenges that predate the pandemic, that predate inflation and the repercussions of the war. And so there's only so much you can do to run afoul of the EU at a time when you do need their support. And so she's going to be really caught between a rock and a hard place between not angering allies and external partners on which she might depend, but still being viewed as delivering on some of the bigger promises. She's promised to take a harder line on immigration, but that has often angered partners and other countries. So I think Meloni is a concern, a very strong concern, but I do think there are some significant obstacles that could limit her ability to take large risks.

28:42      KS: Garret, it's always tempting to try to draw trends and conclusions from everything. It's not just the pundits, it's really appealing, I think, to try and make some sense of the world through trends, and that's why we talk in this way. But I know that sometimes the conclusions that are drawn in these ways by pundits in particular are not always accurate or valuable. So I'm wondering, to what extent does this surge, an increased strength of right-wing parties, actually threaten or weaken European democracy writ large?

29:14      GM: Yeah, I think it is important to try and draw conclusions with all the humility that it entails. And I'm mindful of saying it depends, because that's the easy answer. And I'm going to borrow from Cas Mudde who's a very renowned scholar, a Dutch scholar in the United States who works on populism. If we think about it as a series of historical waves, you have periods where there is a rise, and then it crests a little bit. The story there for me is the extent to which those movements have become anchored. They're present, they're a part of European politics, and they're not going anywhere.

29:53      GM: What's remarkable too is in the last 15, 20 years, we've really seen it being manifested in most countries in Europe, it used to be really limited to some. So in full disclosure, I grew up in France in the 1980s, not to age myself, but Le Pen and what was then the National Front was already a presence in French politics and has been for 40, 50 years. In other cases, these populist manifestations are a lot more novel, they're more recent. But again, the overall trend here is that these populist movements are now, they're deeply anchored. There's a huge variation. In Ireland, they may represent less than 1%, in Hungary, more than 50% of the votes. But the overall average there has definitely been on the rise.

30:44      KS: Last question. Taking all of these cases that we've looked at together, the EU I think clearly has, especially when you throw in the situation of the war in Ukraine, they have a situation on their hands. So what is the EU doing to put pressure on countries that are acting in undemocratic ways, and is it effective?

31:05      GM: So the fascinating element about this is the extent to which the events of the last 10, 15 years have changed what were some of the assumptions that we had about democracy. The operating idea for the EU, and actually for some of the scholarship in the 90s and early 2000s was if you can join the EU, if you go through the process, if you get the stamp of approval, democratization is going to take route. It's like a one-way street, you get to this point and then you're good, it's the only game in town.

31:41      GM: And of course, we now understand that democratization has a reverse gear and sometimes it can be a very strong reverse gear. I think it's raised a question that I don't think the EU had anticipated that once a country was in the club of like-minded democracies, that it could take a step backwards or in certain cases, multiple steps backwards. So I think that's been a real surprise and shock for a variety of internal reasons for many years, I would say in the 2010s, the EU response to Hungary and Poland were rather limited.

32:18      GM: I would say finally in the last two years, the EU has developed a couple of tools. It's too early to say how effective they're going to be, but they're more promising in the sense that these are really using conditionality and associating that with the provision of funds. One of the elements of the EU that's easy to forget is that there's a large amount of economic solidarity and redistribution of funds between member states. And so for Hungary and Poland, in the multi-year budget of the EU, there is a large amount of aid that goes that way. There was an exceptional decision to create this Next Generation fund, I think about 750 billion euros as a response to the pandemic in the summer of 2020 when that was passed. That included provisions that this aid would only be distributed as long as certain rule of law conditions were matched.

33:15      GM: So we've seen the EU now finally, many would say, starting to take more serious measures, and they have stalled providing some of the pandemic recovery funds to both Hungary and Poland because of some of the actions that those countries have taken, threatening also to withhold some of the EU budget funds to Hungary. So that could be a game changer. Again, this is all very fresh, this is all very new. So how the countries react, whether it mollifies them, whether it forces them to make changes, again at a time also when Hungary and Poland and many others are facing difficult sort of economic headwinds because of inflation and because of the rise in energy costs. That will be interesting to see whether that has the hoped for impact or whether there'll be a rally around the flag and it's not going to really lead to policy changes. So too early to tell, but I think it's important that the EU is finally taking those steps.

34:21      KS: Garret Martin, thank you for joining us to talk about right-wing nationalism, right-wing parties in Europe. It's been very interesting, I learned a lot.

34:29      GM: Thank you for having me.

34:30      KS: Big World is a production of the School of International Service at American University. Our podcast is available on our website, on iTunes, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. If you leave us a good rating or review, it'll be like reading a news headline that doesn't terrify you. Our theme music is, It Was Just Cold by Andrew Codeman. Until next time.