BRUSSELS – For the populists of Europe, the election defeat of President Trump, which was a symbol of success and a strong supporter, was severe enough. But his refusal to accept the defeat and the violence that followed damaged the prospects of like-minded leaders across the continent.
“What happened in the Capitol after the defeat of Donald Trump is a bad sign for the populists,” said Dominique Moïsi, a senior analyst at the Paris-based Institut Montaigne. “It says two things: if you prefer it, they do not leave the power easily, and if you choose it, see what they can do to call for popular anger.”
The long day of rioting, violence and death when Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol gave a clear warning to countries such as France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland about underestimating the power of populist anger and the prevalence of conspiracy theories in democratic governments.
Heather Grabbe, director of the Open Policy European Policy Institute in Brussels, said the unrest showed how the populist playbook was based on ‘us towards them and leading to violence’.
“But it is very important to show where populism leads and how it plays with fire,” she added. “If you have raised your supporters with political arguments about us against them, it is not opponents, but enemies who must be fought by all means, and this leads to violence and makes the concession of power impossible.”
How threatening the populists of Europe found the events in the United States can be seen in their reaction: they distanced themselves or became silent one by one from the riot.
In France, Marine Le Pen, head of the far-right National Rally, is expected to pose another important challenge for President Emmanuel Macron in the 2022 election. She was determined to get Mr. To support Trump, he praised his election and Brexit as precursors to populist success in France and showed his insistence that the US election was fraudulent. But after the violence, which she said was ‘very shocking’, Ms. Le Pen said withdrawn, condemns “any violent act that seeks to disrupt the democratic process”.
Like Mrs Le Pen, Matteo Salvini, populist leader of the Italian party against the Immigrant League, said: “Violence is never the solution.” In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, a prominent right-wing party leader, criticized the attack on the US legislature. With the election in March in his country, Mr. Wilders wrote on Twitter“The outcome of democratic elections must always be respected, whether you win or lose.”
Thierry Baudet, another well-known Dutch populist, joined Mr. Trump and the anti-vaccination movement, and in the past has called into question the independence of the judiciary and a ‘false parliament’.
But already in trouble due to the reported anti-Semitic remarks and rifts in his party, Forum for Democracy also called Mr. Baudet has had little say so far.
Nevertheless, Forum for Democracy and Wilders’ Party for Freedom together will get about 20 percent of the votes in the Dutch election, said Rem Korteweg, an analyst at the Clingendael Institute in the Netherlands.
Although populist leaders seem shocked by the events in Washington and nervous about further violence during the inauguration on January 20, there is still great concern among mainstream politicians about anti-elitist, anti-government political movements in Europe, especially amid the confusion and anxiety. produced by the coronavirus pandemic.
Capitol Riot Fallout
Janis A. Emmanouilidis, director of studies at the European Policy Center in Brussels, said there was no uniform European populism. The different movements have different characteristics in different countries, and outside events are only one factor in their varying popularity, he noted.
“The most urgent issue now is Covid-19, but it is not at all clear how politics will play out after the pandemic,” he said. “But,” he adds, “the fear of the worst helps to avoid the worst.”
The “surprising polarization of society” and the violence in Washington “create a lot of deterrence in other societies,” he said. Emmanouilidis said. “We see where it’s going, we want to avoid it, but we’re aware that we can get to that point, too, that things can escalate.”
When economies tank and populists come to power in France or Italy, he said, “God does not spare it when Europe faces the next crisis.” The concern – in view of the 2022 election – seems to be partly why German Chancellor Angela Merkel was so willing about France and the demands of Mr. Macron.
In Poland, the government was far ahead of Trump and public television did not acknowledge his election defeat until Trump did so himself, said Radoslaw Sikorski, a former foreign and defense minister who now chairs the European Parliament delegation. for relations with the United States.
“With the defeat of Trump, there was an audible sound of disappointment from the populist right in Central Europe,” he said. Sikorski said. “For them, the world will be a lonely place.”
President Andrzej Duda of Poland, who Mr. Trump met in Washington in June, it’s easy calls the Capitol riot an internal matter. “Poland believes in the power of American democracy,” he added.
Similarly, Prime Minister Victor Orban of Hungary, a staunch supporter of Mr. Trump, did not comment on the riot. “We must not interfere in what is happening in America, it is America’s business, we are rooted for it and we trust that they will succeed in solving their own problems,” he told the radio.
Mr. Sikorski, the former Polish minister, is a political opponent of the current government in his country. According to him, Europe had to ‘wake up to the dangers of far-right violence’ and conspiracy theories. “There is far more right-wing violence than jihadi violence,” he said. ‘We can not assume that this madness will disappear, because they have their own facts. We must take off our gloves – liberal democracy must defend itself. ”
Enrico Letta, a former prime minister of Italy who is now dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at the Scientific Po, said that Mr. Trump’s credibility lends itself to the disruptive attitudes and approaches of populist leaders in Europe, so it’s a big issue for them. Then came the riot, he says, “which I think has completely changed the map.”
Like Mrs Le Le, Italian populist leaders felt they were “obliged to cut ties with some form of extremism,” he said. Letta said. “They have lost this ability to preserve this ambiguity about their ties with extremists on the fringes,” he added.
He said that Mr. Trump’s defeat and the violent reactions to it were significant blows to European populism. The coronavirus disaster alone, he added, represents ‘the revenge of competence and the scientific method’ against the obscurantism and anti-elitism of populism, noting that the problems surrounding Brexit were also a blow.
“We are even beginning to think that Brexit was something positive for the rest of Europe, which made a resettlement possible,” he said. Letta said. “No one has followed Britain, and now there is the collapse of Trump.”
But Mr. Moïsi, the analyst at Institut Montaigne, made a darker remark. After writing about the emotions of geopolitics, he sees a dangerous analogy in what happened at the Capitol, noting that among many of Mr. Trump’s supporters may turn out to be a heroic event.
The riot reminded him, according to him, of the failed Beer Hall Putsch by Adolf Hitler and the early Nazi party in Munich in 1923.
The attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government also had elements of farce and was widely ridiculed, but it becomes ‘the fundamental myth of the Nazi regime’, said Mr. Moses said. Hitler spent the prison sentence he received after the violence in which he wrote ‘Mein Kampf’.
Mr. Moïsi mentions the death of Ashli Babbitt, a military veteran who was shot dead by a police officer in the Capitol. “If things go badly in America,” he said, “this woman could be the first martyr.”