THE GUARDIAN – OPINION: Austria, France, Germany, Sweden and now Spain – the firewall between the mainstream and the far right is crumbling
Normalisation is the process by which something unusual or extreme becomes part of the everyday. What once provoked horror and outrage soon barely registers. The way the presence of Donald Trump became a mere fact of political life is perhaps the most familiar example. But the normalisation of the far right is happening across the democratic world.
Once Trump became “normal”, events that seemed even more extreme did too. A 2022 survey found that two in five Americans thought civil war was “at least somewhat likely” in the next decade. One political scientist speaks of the possibility of rightwing dictatorship in the US by 2030.
The same creep of normalisation is happening in European politics. At the turn of the millennium, when Austria’s far-right Freedom party (FPÖ) – led by Jörg Haider, who had made comments suggesting he was sympathetic to the Nazi regime – entered a coalition with the conservative People’s party, mass protests not only erupted in Vienna but across Europe and in the US. The EU even imposed diplomatic sanctions on Austria. It was understood that an important red line had been crossed; that given Europe’s blood-soaked history, the far right had to be kept firmly outside the tent. » | Owen Jones | Wednesday, May 31, 2023
