While the world is increasingly focused on American politics as national elections are approaching and a new event in the presidential race happens every day, the public eye has largely ignored the case of Europe.
Between June 6 and 9, major elections were happening throughout all the member-states of the European Union. Citizens were able to vote for the parties that will represent them during the next 5 years at the European Parliament. It is a proportional system, meaning each party that receives a minimum of 5% of votes will have a specific amount of seats. The more votes there are for a party, the more seats will have in the Parliament.
A few months before these elections, far right parties were starting to make their ways again in European countries such as Italy, Netherlands, Germany, and Poland. When the results came in on June 9, Europe started shaking, as if history could repeat itself 80 years later, as it was during WWII. There are in total 720 seats in Parliament, and 319 seats will be occupied by right and far right parties for the next 5 years. Even though these parties are against the European Union, against helping farmers, against helping refugees, and against renewable energy, those parties still managed to make their way by using the fear of the other. This means that they use people that are different from us in skin color, religion, sexual orientation, as the guilty person in the current situation of their countries/Europe. Far right parties make a lot of promises: That farmers won’t have any more support from other countries and no help will be given for them to fully prosper. That only a specific number of refugees will be able to enter under the fear of jobs being taken away, while not one European citizen wants the jobs they do in the first place. That there will be more and better paid jobs with less work but in reality money will be given to the biggest corporations and their CEO’s. With such ideas, the European Union could become an even more polarized collaboration between countries.
What could be the potential dangers of far-right parties having so much power over the European Union, but also at a national level for all of Europe? First of all, they use fear to generate hate and make themselves appear like the hero. This may remind you of WWII except directed toward other minority groups this time. For example, in France where the far-right French party got more than 30% of votes in the European elections, a historic amount, racism against black people and Arabs has increased considerably. Why? The campaign platform of the far-right party, led by Jordan Bardella and Marine Lepen, is almost exclusively based around the idea that foreigners from African countries are destroying the French, stealing money and jobs. In Hungary, the national arts and televisions, allowing everyone to have a neutral access to the world are being attacked by the Prime Minister Viktor Orban. He let László Szabó, founder of KESMA, get one by one all of the television channels and radio stations into one big controlled nationalist propaganda, without any media pluralism left. This is discouraging critical thinking by only allowing content to be aired that is approved by the government. While in Italy, the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wants to get rid of basic rights concerning marriage, sexual orientation and for women to have bodily autonomy, religion, and adoption. To do so, she uses her own image of a young, married, Christian woman who also is a mother. She uses it to lead her ideas as she appears as the hero in Italy and leads people to be the way she is, but without the power she has.
After failing to enact their policies, the left and center parties just opened the door to these nationalist and far-right parties, who are proclaiming themselves as saviors by using the fear of the unknown in Europe. A fear of refugees coming from countries in war, affected by climate change, with no money and no resources to provide for their populations, of people like us trying to find a better life. Their choice of immigrating is simple, by going to the countries that colonized or somehow had control over theirs for so many years, thinking they would fit in enough thanks to the culture, language and heritage. The same countries that left these Third World countries in misery for their own benefit.
People should share their cultures while preserving their own. People should be free to use their body as they want, love and start a family with who they want to. People should not fear the other because of their religion, skin color, culture, or sexual orientation, because there are no races. There is only the human race living on the same planet.
But in Europe, polarization has become larger than ever and parties do not work together to combat the propaganda of the far right parties. While we do have to worry about the future, we should also worry about now.
Rising Junior Agathe Vanmassenhove is the Sports Editor. Her email is avanmass@fandm.edu.