The Southern European Right's Loss of Identity
In late February 2022, the last totem of Spain’s established two-party system fell. At this moment, the rising tide of far-right party Vox overtook assumed a position of dominance over the Spanish right. Like most political earthquakes, this wasn’t an earthquake, as cracks had smoldered for a long time. Spain had long flirted with the vast majority of southern Europe in the downfall of the traditional right and the rise of the populist right.
Spain, Italy, and France all have their unique milieu and characteristics, but the same fate befell the reactionary side of each country’s politics. Why did this occur? Certain common threads run through the stories of the traditional right-wing in southern Europe: migration, corruption, and fear.
The narrative of deeply entrenched traditional forces of reaction being overtaken by younger, more populist radical opponents is ultimately the false application of the stable model of political parties in Britain and the US, whose political systems have a long history of not just two-party supremacy but dominance. The death of the traditional right in southern Europe is not the death of the traditional right but the death of the 90’s right. In Spain, the Partido Popular (PP) rose from the merger of several right-wing parties which had sought to fill the void in the Spanish right following the end of the transition from dictatorship. In France, in the shadow of De Gaulle gave rise to constant infighting throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s, even as conservatives held the presidency. This infighting settled into the Chirac presidency from 1995 to 2007, and Sarkozy beyond that. The 90’s also heralded the breakthrough of the embodiment of southern European conservative Silvio Berlusconi. Although his first term as Italian president in 1994 quickly ended in disaster, by 2000 he had returned to the position.
At the turn of the millennium, In Spain, France, and Italy, conservative leaders ruled supreme. The Spanish and Italian leaders, Jose Maria Aznar and Silvio Berlusconi did not have the pedigree and experience of France’s Chirac. However, all three represented the same European conservative Ideology of economic liberalism and EU integration.
This conservatism was dominant over the right-wing spheres of each country’s politics despite losing to the Left in the case of Aznar and Berlusconi. Even in the aftermath of the financial crisis, the right-wing would surge back into power under Rajoy in Spain and Berlusconi would return in Italy. The legacy of the late 2000s is not only found in concrete epitaphs of Spain’s economic collapse and the avaricious hope of the Pre-crisis world. No, it was also the genesis of social media, the printing press of our age. And, like the printing press’s role in spreading the ideas of reformation in the 16th century, social media has heralded a new age for communication.
The idea of social media revolutionizing how political campaigns are organized and parties are made is not new. Yet, what social media has also argued is the dilution of almost all western discourse to regurgitation of Anglo-American (emphasis on the American) culture.
This reverse colonization is where Spanish or Italian teens recognize not only the American cultural symbols of ages past but Black Lives Matter and rainbow filters on social media. An example of this is “Fake News, “ a now-infamous term that came into widespread use in the years of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and subsequent presidency. Now, on many political websites in Spain, “fact-checking” and “fake news” are everywhere. The same can be said of Italy and France. This dilution of local and national identity and politics into the ever-increasing fishbowl of an American culture war contributes to the collapse of the right of the millennium.
In Spain, Vox was once a far-right party challenging a much larger opponent. Now, Spain’s most dominant party on the right’s slogan is “La Voz de la Espana Viva.” This sense of national life and a reassertion of identity is a response to the feeling of loss. This national loss was expressed by current French far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour, whose 2014 book was entitled “Le Suicide Francais” and tells of his view of France’s decline since 1970.
So far in this article, I have only dwelt with the lightest touch on Immigration the traditional catalyst of the popularity of the far-right. However, Immigration by itself is not enough to change the entire political geography of a nation’s conservatives. Jean Marie Le Pen may have gotten into the 2nd round of the French presidential election in 2002, but she was roundly crushed in the final vote, garnering only 22%. However, as I write this piece, le Pen and Zemmour are ingratiating themselves even more into the far right, polling at around 30% combined, with over 40% of voters possibly considering voting for Le Pen in the 2nd round. Therefore, far-right ideas are not new, but rather their hold over the populace has expanded.
The factor that cuts across these three countries most prominently is a loss of identity manifesting itself in this new right. In France, the totemic issue is migration and more specifically Muslims in society, with popular policy positions seemingly being all about the extent to which religious symbols such as Burqas and Niqabs should be banned. In Spain, this loss of identity finds the lightning rod of separatism in Catalunya as a cause for celebration. Over the western Mediterranean in Italy, immigration combined with the chaotic last 15 years, including EU chosen Prime ministers and repeated debacles, have all imperiled conservative senses of identity.
Corruption has bedraggled the neoliberal southern European right with Chirac and Sarkozy being convicted in France and the “Casos” in Spain being practically innumerable. This is without mentioning the human idol to corruption that Silvio Berlusconi has long represented. This lack of conservative rigor has shaped visions of a new right that lost a sense of purpose, cause, and national identity.
Will then this eclipse by the ascendant “far-right” block out the dying sun of the economically neoliberal European right of the 90s and 2000s? Well, dying suns cast long shadows, however the shadows of the 90’s right fall not upon the far-right but on the left and center of these southern European polities. In Spain, Pedro Sanchez often shirks his left-wing coalition partners and is every bit as pro-western intervention in Ukraine as Aznar was about intervention in Iraq 20 years ago. In France, Macron has tried taking on the economic reforms neoliberals only dreamed of despite heralding from the left-wing administration of Francois Hollande.
Ultimately, this political movement rightwards across southern Europe will continue until questions about identity both national and European are resolved. Following the Risorgimento of Italy, it was famously said that “now we have made Italy, we must make Italians” now maybe national identities need to be reforged to brave the perils of the 20th century.
Image courtesy of Michael Buckley via Flickr, ©2019, no rights reserved.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the wider St. Andrews Foreign Affairs Review team.
