The populist right’s ‘worst enemy’: Itself

FAVERSHAM, U.K. — Frank Furedi, one of the European populist right’s intellectual darlings, has a nagging anxiety. What if they gain power, then blow it?

A Hungarian-born sociologist who spent decades on the political fringes himself, Furedi now runs MCC Brussels, a think tank backed by Viktor Orbán’s Budapest government. It aims to challenge what he calls the European Union’s liberal consensus — and help sharpen the ideas of a rising populist right.

Speaking in his home office in the English market town of Faversham, where he was recovering from a recent illness, the 78-year-old professional provocateur — who has risen to prominence in Europe’s right-wing circles — hailed what he sees as the impending collapse of Europe’s political center. But he also questioned whether the insurgent movements benefiting from that upheaval have the discipline needed to govern if they win.

“You can win an election, but if you’re not prepared for its consequences, then you become your worst enemy,” he said during a two-hour conversation in his paper-strewn office. “You basically risk being doomed forever.”

Across Europe, the movements Furedi is talking about are already testing the political mainstream. Nigel Farage’s Reform Party is surging in Britain, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally has a real shot at the French presidency, and the Alternative for Germany is consistently at or near the top of polls. In Italy and Hungary, Giorgia Meloni and Orbán have already shown what populists in power can look like.

Inside his house in Faversham, the conversation turned from Europe’s populist surge to the ideas that might shape what comes next. As Furedi led the way up the stairs, a yapping cockerpoo was hauled away into some back room. At the top of the staircase was a framed poster of Hannah Arendt, the philosopher who understood the attraction of radical political movements for the disenfranchised and alienated — and the potential for those movements to veer into evil.

Nigel Farage’s Reform Party is surging in Britain, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally has a real shot at the French presidency, and the Alternative for Germany is consistently at or near the top of polls. | Nicolas Guyonnet/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images

But Furedi isn’t worried about a return of European totalitarianism — if anything, he thinks the current regime is where freedom of thought and speech are being crushed. His real fear is that Europe’s right-wingers arrive in power unprepared — failing to learn from the experience of the U.S. MAGA movement, which almost blew its chance after Donald Trump won power in 2016 but couldn’t execute a coherent vision for government. 

“There’s a real demand for something different,” he said. “It’s the collapse of the old order, which is really what’s exciting.” But while Furedi is eager to watch it all burn down, he’s unconvinced by the right-wing parties carrying the torches. 

“At the moment, all politics is negative,” he said, noting two exceptions where the right has managed to govern with stability: Meloni and Orbán. 

“It’s a fascinating moment in most parts of Europe, but it’s a moment that isn’t going to be there forever,” he said. “But whether these movements have got the maturity and the professionalism to be able to project themselves in a convincing way still remains to be seen.” 

Political program

Like Farage, Meloni and many of their ilk, Furedi is riding a political wave after a lifetime spent far from power or relevance.

Since the 1960s he has been an agitator at the obscure edge of politics, first on the left as a founder of the Revolutionary Communist Party and its magazine Living Marxism, which attacked the British Labour Party for its centrism, later to become a writer for Spiked, an internet magazine that attacked Labour from the right. 

His real fear is that Europe’s right-wingers arrive in power unprepared — failing to learn from the experience of the U.S. MAGA movement. | Heather Diehl/Getty Images

He’s pro-Brexit, but thinks the EU should remain intact (albeit with diminished power). He despises doctrinaire multiculturalism, is a defender of women’s right to have an abortion, and thinks Covid and climate change reveal an undesirable timidity in the face of danger. He’s an implacable supporter of Israel, but thinks freedom of speech should extend even to abhorrent ideas, including Holocaust denial. He thinks the far right should support trade unions. 

“I don’t see myself as right-wing. So even though other people might call me far-right, right, fascist or whatever, I identify myself in a very different kind of way,” he said. That evening he planned to watch Wuthering Heights. The best thing he’s seen recently? Sinners. 

Under Furedi, MCC Brussels has gained notoriety — and some level of mainstream acceptance — as a far-right counterweight to the hefty centrist institutes that dot the city’s European Quarter. 

The think tank promotes Hungary’s brand of right-wing nationalism and its rejection of European federalism, immigration policy and LGBTQ+ inclusion. But he insists the project isn’t about being a mouthpiece for Budapest so much as creating a place where right-wing ideas can be tested and hardened. Across all of politics, he laments, “ideas are not taken sufficiently seriously.” 

MCC Brussels is fully funded by the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, a private higher education institution that has received massive financial backing from Orbán’s government. While Furedi acknowledges that the think tank’s publications frequently echo the Hungarian government — “we have our sympathies” — he denies that Orbán calls the shots. 

MCC Brussels is fully funded by the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, a private higher education institution that has received massive financial backing from Orbán’s government. | János Kummer/Getty Images

Hungary’s upcoming election, which threatens to end the prime minister’s 16-year rule, is unlikely to affect its funding. The college is floated by assets permanently gifted by the government, said John O’Brien, MCC Brussels head of communications. 

Other movements’ weaknesses

In his eighth decade, Furedi worries he will run out of time to see “something nice happening.” But he’s convinced the political order he has spent his life attacking is ready to fold.

To illustrate why, he points to Faversham. He arrived in the area in 1974 to study at the University of Kent, where he later became a professor. In the last few years the town has become a flash point for anti-immigration protests after a former care home was converted to house a few dozen refugee children. 

Last summer and fall, left and right protest groups clashed over a campaign to hang English flags across the town. One Guardian reader reported hearing chants of “Sieg Heil” in the streets at night.

To Furedi, the anger behind the clashes is the inevitable consequence of a narrow politics that has not only lost touch with the people it represents, but actively shut them out. “Our elites adopted what are called post-material values and basically looked down on people who were interested in their material circumstances,” he said.

YouGov’s most recent seat-by-seat polling analysis in September put Farage’s Reform easily ahead in Faversham. But Furedi doesn’t give the party a lot of credit for winning people’s backing with a positive program for government. “I think Reform recognizes the fact that they have to be both more professional,” he said. But, he added, “You cannot somehow magic a professional cadre of operators.” 

YouGov’s most recent seat-by-seat polling analysis in September put Farage’s Reform easily ahead in Faversham. | Ben Birchall/PA Images via Getty Images

The successes of the right are, in Furedi’s view, primarily based on being “beneficiaries of other movements’ weaknesses.” 

The same was also true for Trump, he said. “It wasn’t like a love affair or anything of that sort. The U.S. president just happened to act as a conduit for a lot of those sentiments.”

Is this a recipe for good government? “No,” he said. “One of the big tragedies in our world is that democracy in a nation requires serious political parties.”