Adeline Von Drehle
Conservative populism is on the march across the world, as unchecked immigration continues to inspire a backlash of nativist feelings and nationalist rhetoric. As migrant crises plague Europe and the United States, populists leaders are adopting hardline immigration stances and boosting their rise to power.
The most recent example is in Portugal, previously one of Europe’s most reliably liberal countries. The center-left Socialist Party lost control of the government for the first time since 2015 in early March. They were toppled by the center-right Democratic Alliance by a mere 2,000 votes; both parties gathered about 29% of the vote. But the headline of the evening was the far-right Chega party and its third-place finish with 18% of the vote.
Chega, which means “Enough” in English, more than doubled its 2022 support. Andre Ventura, a former sportscaster with a large social media following, led the Chega Party on an anti-corruption message while stoking fears that crime-committing migrants are overrunning Portugal. Fact-checking organizations say Ventura has routinely exaggerated the threat, which he conflates with actual problems ranging from political corruption and a housing shortage to high inflation and low wages.
The Portuguese election may herald what is to come later this year on both sides of the Atlantic. Some 20 national-level elections are scheduled in the West in 2024, including in the United States and the European Union.
“Portugal is a laboratory for the electoral year in Europe,” said António Costa Pinto, a political expert with the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Lisbon.
In Portugal, dark memories of a right-wing dictatorship which fell in 1974 kept populists at bay for the last half-century. For that reason, the rise of Chega is viewed as a signal that the far right can surge anywhere in Europe, and that disenchanted voters can be convinced that ultraconservative populism is the answer to a variety of social ills.
Germany, also believed to be immune to nationalist rhetoric in a post-World War II world, is host to the increasingly popular far-right Alternative fur Deutschland party. AfD’s rise has been propelled mostly by rising anger over immigration. In the Netherlands last November, anti-migrant stalwart Geert Wilders staged a surprising first-place finish. Austria’s far-right Freedom Party is also expecting to win this year’s national election. It has made headlines for paying homage to the country’s Nazi past and highlighting the message that migrants are “replacing” white Europeans.
It is understandable that immigration has emerged as a divisive issue in Europe. The EU received 1.1 million asylum requests in 2023, the highest number since 2015. Many countries have been overrun with Ukrainian refugees seeking safety from Russia’s invasion. Voters across Europe are increasingly drawn to far-right populists who promise to restrict immigration and espouse a “positive approach to their homeland,” as the Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl put it.
“For the populist radical right, immigration has not only translated into control by the state over its borders but subsequently also into a danger to the ‘nation,’” wrote Martin A. Schain, author of “The Border: The Politics of Borders in Europe and the United States.” “Immigration has become highly nationalistic.”
Similar forces are bubbling up in France, Italy, Finland, Ireland, and Greece. Britain famously left the EU after waves of nationalist rhetoric mobilized a majority of citizens to vote for the Brexit referendum. If all this sounds familiar, it’s because perhaps the most blatant example of immigration fueling popular nationalist sentiment is in the United States.
Polling last month showed that 42% of Americans – including 72% of Republicans – say they feel that if the United States is too open, it runs the risk of losing its identity.
Although that formulation is debatable, the migrant crisis on America’s border is very real. Along the U.S.-Mexico border, the government reported a historic high of 3.2 million migrant encounters in fiscal year 2023. The volume of migration is straining the capacity of the entire immigration system, and cities across the country are struggling to house the swelling numbers of impoverished asylum-seekers.
Immigration policy is sure to be a leading issue for U.S. voters in November. Recent polling shows that 28% of Americans think immigration is the most important problem facing the country, making the issue the single most important problem for Americans since 2019. Both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump visited the southern border in February, but it is Trump who has been notoriously vocal about his distaste for migrants.
Growing migrant crises, compounded by various economic and social ills, have led everyday people to throw their support behind those newcomers who claim to have the cure. Mainstream parties seem not to have grasped the fundamental fact that people cheer loudest for strong rhetoric.
“These are not ‘flash parties’ that suddenly appear and disappear,” Schain warns. “They are likely to continue to endure, since, like other political parties, they have voters who identify with them.”
The conservative populism that began as a fledgling trend with Brexit and the election of Trump in 2016 is likely to cement itself as a significant movement of the 21st century, transitioning from fringe to mainstream with every passing month.
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