This trend is spreading not only to the United States but also to European countries such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
For example, in July, a campaign in which party leader Nigel Farage promised to “freeze” immigration policy helped the nativist British Reform Party secure third place in the UK general election.
And in September, the staunchly anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) also became the first far-right party to win a state election in the country since World War II.
That same month, the German government nearly ousted the Social Democratic Party (SPD) led by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz from power in the state of Brandenburg.
Meanwhile, in France, Marine Le Pen led a coalition party known as the National Rally (RN) to third place in the recent national elections, attacking immigration, Islam and multiculturalism.
Many centrist and left-wing parties are responding with their own efforts to take a hard line.
In France, President Emmanuel Macron’s government has sought to chill the far right by adopting many of its ideas on immigration, pledging to further limit asylum and prison sentences for people who enter France illegally.
The moves came in response to conservative parties like Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s unprecedented alliance with the far right.
“We cannot deny that Michel Barnier seems to have the same assessment as us on immigration,” Le Pen recently told La Tribune with satisfaction.
Immigration is a central theme of far-right parties in the West, but it is not the only factor increasing their appeal.
A study published in Cambridge University Press in April 2023 found that austerity measures, often accompanied by cuts to benefits and government services, fostered the rise of fringe parties and political instability. .
But immigrants can serve as convenient scapegoats in sentiments of downward mobility.
Judith Sunderland, Associate Director for Europe and Central Asia, said: “Far-right populist parties have waxed and waned in a variety of countries across the European Union, with immigration being a real flashpoint. ” he said. A division of the watchdog group Human Rights Watch.
As a result, parties on both sides of the political spectrum are reacting to the new power of the far right, she added.
“Mainstream parties on the right and left are moving slowly, and sometimes very quickly, to the far right on these issues in the scramble for votes and political support, and unless they adopt these policies, the far right He argued that political parties would decline.
