Europe's Populists Prepare For A Nationalist Spring - The New Yorker

Europeʼs Populists Prepare for a Nationalist Spring - The New Yorker 26/01/2017, 09*18
NEWS DESK
EUROPE’S POPULISTS
PREPARE FOR A
NATIONALIST SPRING
By Elisabeth Zerofsky January 25, 2017
A gathering of European far-right leaders

in Koblenz, Germany, on the day of
Donald Trump’s Inauguration expressed
growing con!dence in its agenda
following his victory and that of Brexit.
n January 20th, as
O Donald Trump was
taking the oath of office, in
Washington, populist leaders
from across Europe were
arriving in a quiet city on the
Rhine. Early the next morning,
French, German, Italian,
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/europes-populists-prepare-for-a-nationalist-spring?mbid=social_facebook Page 1 of 10
Austrian, and Dutch

nationalists stood together on a
stage in Koblenz, a central
German town that has been
associated with political
countercurrents since it
harbored aristocrats during the
French Revolution. Their
national "ags "ew behind
them as they greeted what they
called the “birth of a new
world.” “Yesterday, a new
America,” Geert Wilders, the
leader of the Dutch Party for
Freedom, proclaimed to a hall
#lled with about a thousand
attendees, most of them sturdy
men in dark suits. “Tomorrow,
a new Europe.”
The momentum of the Brexit

vote, followed by Trump’s
election, has provided
European populists with a
ready-made argument for their
own inevitability. “People
thought Trump wouldn’t win
and he won; they thought
during the two months
preceding his Inauguration he
would backpedal on all his
promises, but he didn’t do it,”
Thibaud Gibelin, a
parliamentary aide to France’s
National Front, told me. “It
shows it is possible to achieve
victory over the establishment,
and for us that’s the most
beautiful symbol.” The parties
gathered in Koblenz have
gained voters over the past few
years, as Europeans across the
political spectrum have lost
con#dence in mainstream
politicians’ ability to manage
the refugee crisis, the threat of
terrorism, and, in some cases,
high unemployment. Both
Wilders and Marine
Marine Le Pen,
Le Pen
of France’s National Front, will
face elections this spring, and
both lead in the polls. Le Pen,
who could become President of
France in May, has called for a
Brexit-style referendum, which
she claims is the only way to
regain control over national
borders and put an end to
immigration.Marine
France and
Le Pen
Germany are the nucleus of
the European Union, and a MOST POPULAR
“Frexit” would in all likelihood
1. Doomsday Prep for the Super-
mean its end.
Rich
By Evan Osnos
2. Why Republicans Won’t Break
2. Why Republicans Won’t Break

The Koblenz conference was with Trump
organized by Germany’s By John Cassidy
Alternative für Deutschland, a
four-year-old party that is 3. A Bad Day for the Environment,
with Many More to Come
trying to gain a foothold in a
By Bill McKibben
country that is still loath to
tolerate the far right. In the 4. U Up?
fall, the AfD will likely obtain By Ethan Kuperberg
seats in the German
parliament for the #rst time. 5. Trump’s Tough-Guy Talk on
Torture Risks Real Lives
Much of the French and
By Jane Mayer
German press expressed
Frauke
surprise that Frauke Petry, the
Frauke Petry
Our Thirty Most Popular »
party’s forty-one-year-old
chair, would appear with Le
Pen; the National Front
presents a particular taboo in
Germany because of some of
its founders’ ties to the Vichy
regime. But of Europe’s
populists, Le Pen has the most
serious ambitions to become
head of state,Frauke
and shePetry
is the
clear kingpin of the group.
Le Pen took the stage like the

instructor at a populists’ master
class, radiating a warm
familiarity. She hailed the
domino effect that June’s
Brexit vote had set in motion.
“We have felt it coming, the
rebellion of the people of

Europe against a non-elected
power that has pretended to be
based on democracy,” she said.
“What a blow to the old
order!” The applause at the end
was so rapturous that she
returned to the stage for a
curtain call.
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There is something
contradictory about a
confederation of nationalist
parties, but in addition to their
shared opposition to the E.U.
the parties have a common
patron in Moscow. “It’s pretty
clear that one of the

geopolitical elements bringing
these different forces together
today is proximity to the
Kremlin,” Joël Gombin, a
political scientist who studies
the National Front, told me. Le
Pen’s party has been taking
Where to Go, what to do
money from Russian banks for
See our new Goings On About Town, The
years, most recently a nine-
New Yorker’s online guide to the city’s best
million-euro loan, in 2014, in culture, from ballet to bagels. »
from a bank that has since
been
been dissolved
dissolved. Over the past
been dissolved
four years, Le Pen and
members of her inner circle
have made several trips to
Moscow, where they’ve met
with officials including the
Deputy Prime Minister and
the speaker of the Duma; her
contacts reportedly include
politicians who havehas been
since
sanctioned
been by the E.U. in
dissolved
response to the Ukraine crisis.
Leaders from the AfD have
been guests at Russian
government forums, and
Austria’s Freedom Party has
signed a coöperation
agreement with President
Vladimir Putin’s party. These
connections have coalesced
into an informal network

connecting Putin’s inner circle
and the European far right.
Le Pen presents an alliance

between nationalist parties as a
source not of bellicosity but of
harmony. In Koblenz, she laid
out a vision of a "owering of
European cultures, and argued
that a “diversity” of strong
national identities would bring
not war but mutual respect.
Far-right supporters also
believe that new European and
American alliances with Russia
will bring about a broader
détente. In Koblenz, I had
coffee with a #fty-four-year-
old German attendee who
politely refused to tell me his
name or profession. “I don’t
know what American troops
are doing six thousand
kilometres away from their
country at the Russian border,”
he complained. I suggested
that they might be responding
to Russian provocation. “No,
the Americans provoked #rst,
by orchestrating Ukraine,” he
said. “The Americans are very
big in regime change, very bad

in solving problems. Trump
will solve Ukraine and
concentrate on American
interests. Then it’s O.K.”
At the Koblenz conference, the

populists made their claims of
“rebirth” before an audience of
mostly older white men. But
the “identitarian” movement,
while small—the French
chapter claims two thousand
paying members—is growing
among the young. Gibelin, the
National Front aide, is twenty-
seven years old and was dressed
in a gray wool suit, his hair
slicked back in the manner of
Donald Trump’s elder sons. As
we stood in the café outside
the conference hall, the babel
of languages thickening around
us, I asked whether he agreed
with the vision put forth by
older party members. His
response came in the form of a
seamless narrative. “The reality
today that European countries
are interdependent is clear to
everyone,” he told me.
“Coöperation is obvious, but
it’s a question of what kind of

coöperation. The one we have
now, which bene#ts the
economic empire and denies
identity in submission to
globalized interests?”
Europeans, he said, share a
cultural heritage. “We have our
Roman roots, our language, our
culture; the cathedrals you see,
whether in Cologne or Paris,
that are Gothic, that’s
transnational; the Renaissance
was a European phenomenon;
and the great religious
moments that marked Europe,
the spread of Christianity, the
Reformation, those were never
isolated to one nation.” The
refugee question was simple.
Global corporations sought
cheap labor, and politicians
enabled them. He didn’t mind
European governments
providing #nancial aid to
refugees, as long as that aid was
used to help them stay in their
own countries. “We think the
dignity of these people can be
expressed in their own
homeland. Not here.” He
shrugged con#dently. “We are
attacked by the media as being

extremist, but for me it’s
exactly the opposite,” he said.
“It’s global capitalism that is
extreme. We are simply
defending the interests of the
people.”
MORE: DONALD TRUMP EUROPE
BREXIT
READ SOMETHING
THAT MEANS
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Europeʼs Populists Prepare for a Nationalist Spring - The New Yorker 26/01/2017, 09*18

A gathering of European far-right leaders

Austrian, and Dutch

The momentum of the Brexit

2. Why Republicans Won’t Break

Le Pen took the stage like the

rebellion of the people of

To get more of the latest

Enter your e-mail address.

clear that one of the

into an informal network

Le Pen presents an alliance

big in regime change, very bad

At the Koblenz conference, the

it’s a question of what kind of

attacked by the media as being

Reprints RSS Site Map Store Strongbox

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