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THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
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middle-class citizens and low-skilled workers
whose disillusionment with the political parties
they have traditionally supported and unions
has led them to seek miracle solutions to their
desperate situations. All that is lacking to make
the picture complete is political expansionism
and the emergence of mass movements. Times
have changed. We will not be seeing torch-lit
processions of brown shirts or supreme leaders
in military uniforms shouting slogans. Today’s
extreme right-wing movements nevertheless
pursue the same dual objectives: to deflect peo-
ple’s anger away from those truly responsible
for their problems and direct it towards imagi-
nary enemies and to shore up the very system
they outwardly criticise. Their concern for work-
ers is as false as their patriotism. A few days
after the election, Stephen Bannon, the arche-
typal alt-right populist in charge Donald Trump’s
presidential campaign who now serves as senior
White House strategy advisor, was quoted in a
Bloomberg Businessweek article as having said,
“This is not the French Revolution ... What
Trump represents is a restoration – a restoration
of true American capitalism”.
Annex I provides an overview of recent elec-
toral results for the majority of the nationalist
and anti-European parties currently active in EU
member states, which represent a wide variety
of interests and positions. Although all are
openly anti-European, nationalist and populist,
Great Britain’s UKIP has nothing else in common
with the anti-Semitic Hungarian Jobbik party
nor does the German neo-Nazi party (NPD) have
anything else in common with Alternative for
Germany (AfD). Electoral support for these par-
ties doubled between the two most recent na-
tional election cycles in Europe, in the last of
which they received a total of over 32 million
votes. The creation of two new parties during
the interval between these two election periods
– the AfD in Germany and the Five Star
Movement (M5S) in Italy – partially accounts for
this impressive groundswell in voter support.
Given its usefulness as a paradigm of dema-
goguery and populism in Europe, it is worth fo-
cusing briefly on the Italian Five Star Movement.
The M5S was co-founded by Internet communi-
cations expert Gianroberto Casaleggio and the
popular anti-establishment comedian Beppe
Grillo, a charismatic leader who describes it as a
movement organised in “circles” that bases its
decisions on the online votes cast by its mem-
bers. The M5S was the first party to refer col-
lectively to mainstream politicians as “the po-
litical caste” – the abolition of whose privileges
appears to be the most important, if not the
only, plank of its political platform. Grillo’s use
of gutter language (
vaffanculo
days) and per-
sonal, off-the-cuff style of leadership has al-
ready provoked the defection of a number of
office holders elected under the party banner.
Although the M5S defines itself as being “nei-
ther left nor right”, its Eurosceptic outlook, op-
position to the euro and support for the penali-
sation of illegal immigration speak for
themselves. Members of the European
Parliament affiliated with the M5S form part of
the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy
group, a parliamentary coalition whose mem-
bers include extreme-right parties such as UKIP,
AfD and Democrats of Sweden. An M5S pro-
posal to join forces with the Alliance of Liberals
and Democrats for Europe – a parliamentary
group that defends diametrically opposed prin-
ciples – was sharply rebuffed.
Is there such a thing as left-wing populism?
The answer is a resounding yes. The regimes es-
tablished by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Evo
Morales in Bolivia are prime examples. Lenin
used populism to great effect. There are leftist
parties in Europe that use populist techniques to