Free Republic

The three most right-wing groups of the European Parliament and their members are all known as "far-right" — but they have some crucial differences. The members of Patriots for Europe met in Brussels for the first time on Thursday, convening on the sidelines of the European summit. The group is one of three at the right-wing end of the European Parliament, joined by Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) and the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). The parties making up these three parliamentary groups are generally nationalist, sovereigntist, conservative and Eurosceptic, thoguh their positions differ on Russia and Ukraine and on...

Austria’s Freedom Party has secured the first far-right national parliamentary election victory since the Second World War, beating conservatives in power. Political analysts say the far-right achieved this electoral victory by tapping into voters’ concerns over immigration, inflation, and the war in Ukraine. It must be said, however, that the Freedom Party’s chances of governing are unclear at this stage. Preliminary election results show that the Freedom Party finished first in the election with 29.2 percent of the vote, while the ruling Christian-democratic and liberal-conservative Austrian People’s Party came in second with 26.5 percent of the vote. The center-left in...

LONDON — Populist lawmaker Nigel Farage on Friday won his first-ever seat in the U.K.'s parliament as he looks to shake up the country's politics with his right-wing Reform UK party. The win by the Brexit proponent follows seven failed attempts to become a member of the British parliament, although he has served as a (pro-Brexit) member of the European Parliament. "My plan is to build a mass national movement over the course of the next few years and hopefully be big enough to challenge the general election properly in 2029," Farage said after the result was announced. The result...

Reflections on the EU election. This is perhaps nothing more than wishful thinking, but my sense is that in Europe, when it comes to Islam, things may just possibly be coming increasingly to a head. I suspect that the monstrous Hamas attacks of October 7 awakened the imaginations of millions of Europeans who, although on some level surely knowing better, had lulled themselves into passivity with the notion that those surly-looking Muslims living in their midst, some of whom occasionally spoke out loud about conquering Europe in the name of their prophet, couldn’t possibly mean what they said or be...

None of these demands are "far right" or unreasonable. What's shocking is that ordinary people are having to fight their own governments to reestablish rights and standards of living. In last week’s European Parliamentary elections, citizens in country after country rejected left-wing policies. Predictably, left-leaning major media outlets across the globe—the Associated Press, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Vox, Politico, the Guardian—decried these results as Europe “lurching” to the “far right.” Vox warned that the success of right-wing parties was the result of “increasing authoritarianism and non-democratic trends” throughout the world and warned that these trends were...

American conservative media gushed over the nationalist victories in the European Union elections this week. Fox News, Breitbart, Washington Examiner, Daily Wire, The Blaze, and many others celebrated the results. Fox even praised the election as a strong rebuke to “socialism” and “far-left policies.” The American Right didn’t always treat Euro nationalists with adulatory coverage. Not that long ago, conservative outlets would warn about the dangers of these parties and slander them with the same hysteric claims liberal journos deploy. The positive coverage of Euro nationalists is another positive development for the American Right. When I started working at the...

Elections in 27 countries for the European Parliament ended on Sunday with early projections giving far-right parties a strong showing, a result that, if confirmed, would amount to a powerful gauge of voter dissatisfaction and a stinging rebuke for the political mainstream.The balloting indicated that the prevailing winds had grown decidedly chill for Europe’s political establishment. The results are likely to make it harder for the European Parliament to form majorities to pass laws, and would render negotiations over divisive issues even tougher. More broadly, they underscored that the momentum of the far-right forces that have been expanding their challenge...

After the four-day, 27-state democratic marathon that is the European parliamentary election, a picture has emerged of a fragile centre just holding amid a shift to the right that carries a significant potential to shape the near future of the EU, despite having fallen short of producing the earthquake some predicted. The big shock came in France, with President Emmanuele Macron’s defeat at that hands of the RN (Rassemblement National – National Rally) party prompting him to call snap national parliamentary elections. France needed not only “a clear majority” argued Macron, but citizens capable of “choosing to write history, not...