Europe’s middle ground slides to the right under extremist influence

For the surging far right in Germany, a Syrian asylum-seeker’s brutal knife attack that killed three and wounded eight others could not have been better timed.

It’s election season, and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) jumped on the Aug. 23 incident, riding the party’s anti-immigration platform to victory on Sunday. The party won 33% of the vote in one east German state election – the first state win for the extreme right since World War II – and a second-place finish with about 30% in another.

The AfD is unlikely to be able to form a regional government; its more moderate rivals will boycott the extremist group when it comes to building ruling coalitions. But across Europe, radical right-wingers – from authoritarian-minded populists to out-and-out Nazis – are wielding increasing influence on mainstream parties.

It’s a new world in Europe. The head of Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union now dubs his country’s traditionally welcoming migration policy “naive.” French centrists are calling for more law and order, and Norwegian conservatives have discussed keeping refugees in camps abroad, rather than offering them shelter in Norway.

Once-extremist points of view are being normalized, says Cécile Alduy, a French professor and author who examines nationhood and identity. “The danger is that we are starting to have governments that don’t have the stigma of the label ‘far right’ but get people used to thinking that depriving people of rights because of their origins or skin color is ok,” she wrote in an email interview.

The mainstream drifts rightward

In France last week, a migrant from Cape Verde ran over and killed a gendarme. The man still held a license despite nearly a dozen traffic violations, a fact that sparked outrage.

France’s domestic affairs minister trumpeted the law-and-order language of the far right. “Policemen and gendarmes are being killed, and indeed the courts should be much firmer against those who use their vehicle … as a weapon,” said Gérald Darmanin.

Mr. Darmanin has promoted an immigration law taken in part from the far-right National Rally’s platform; the resulting policy was so extreme that France’s highest court judged it unconstitutional. In July, President Emmanuel Macron criticized what he called a “totally immigrationist” policy proposal from the opposition, using a radical-right buzzword from the 1990s.

This rightward shift away from the middle ground in France reflects “partly pressure from the far right, and partly belief among the conservatives that the best way to defeat the far right is to borrow from them,” says Jean-Yves Camus, a French political scientist and expert in nationalist movements.

German centrists – despite a decades-long mission to ensure a movement like Nazism never again takes root in society – have not been immune to this rightward momentum either.

After the Syrian man’s knife attack two weeks ago, German conservative leader Friedrich Merz declared a “turning point” and demanded an end to migration from Syria and Afghanistan, which would likely be illegal under European Union and German law.

Sweden, with a long history of liberal immigration policies and a huge welfare state, proudly agreed to take in more than 160,000 refugees in 2015. By 2021, the “Moderate Party” was forging a proposal with populists to tighten borders, reduce numbers of asylum-seekers, and restrict welfare benefits for immigrants, among other policies long championed by the far right.

“They’ve moved in an immigration-restrictive direction, typical in many countries where the far right are not allowed into coalitions but have influence anyway,” says Katrine Fangen, a sociologist at the University of Oslo who specializes in extremism.

If radicalism is creeping into the mainstream, the fact is that it profited from an opening that centrist parties themselves created by their decades-long failure to address real problems that people are now getting radicalized about, says Jan Techau, a German political scientist and director for Europe at the Eurasia Group.

Those issues include immigration and homeland security. “And because there’s still little movement to tackle this issue, the rhetoric will get harsher, and people start to embrace the rhetoric and it becomes normal,” says Mr. Techau.

The right sometimes gets it wrong

Political outcomes could unfold in a variety of ways.

In the Netherlands, the far right won the most parliamentary seats in last year’s election. But party leader Geert Wilders has been unable to form a government – in the face of concerted opposition – despite having given up his ambition to become prime minister and having ditched some of his most dramatic policies, such as banning mosques and leaving the EU.

In France, on the other hand, the prospect that Marine Le Pen might win presidential elections in 2027 is no longer outlandish. “It’s a reality,” says Dr. Camus, the French political scientist. “Ten years ago, it was totally beyond the pale. It was science fiction.”

Yet, in some countries, conservative parties that were radicalized by the immigration issue and rode into government over the last decade, have since suffered setbacks.

British Conservative party leaders had referred to illegal migration as an “invasion” and framed Brexit as a way to “take back control” of borders. The party was swept from office in July.

In Poland, during the 2015 migrant crisis that happened to coincide with national elections, conservative politicians accused migrants of carrying parasites and warned that Muslim migrants would undermine Poland’s Christian identity. That helped them win the election, but they were voted out of office in 2023.

Germany’s Nazi past might hold the far right at bay in special ways, say analysts. For one, mainstream parties have put a “firewall” around forming coalitions with the far right.

But when centrists feel pressure from the far right, and adopt the rhetoric, says Hajo Funke, a German political scientist at the Free University in Berlin, “it does restrict the liberal atmosphere. It’s polarizing, and reduces this atmosphere of acknowledging one another, of empathy towards the problems of others. It’s a big danger.”