Shift Right: What's Driving It?

Austria is the case in point at the moment

I kicked off 2025 with a post on some impending electoral losses for social-democratic, centre-left governments. The other side of that coin, then, is the rise of the right, especially those parties I describe as “conservative nationalist” that are overtaking traditional centre-right, conservative or Christian-democratic parties.

Austria’s Freedom Party (Freiheitlichen Partei Österreichs, or FPÖ) is the key example at the moment. (I’ve given a briefing on this conservative nationalist party in an earlier post.) The FPÖ won the most votes (28.8%) and seats (57 out of 183) in the September 2024 election, on a relatively strong turnout of 77.7%. This resulted from an election campaign dominated by concerns about immigrants and asylum seekers, economic performance, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The incumbent caretaker Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), which lost 20 seats, refused to work with the FPÖ and commenced government-formation talks with the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) and a small centrist liberal party called NEOS. Last week (more than three months after the election) those talks broke down. The country’s president (a former Green) has now approached the “winner”, the FPÖ, to see if they can form a coalition instead. The FPÖ’s leader, Herbert Kickl, has insisted that he be Chancellor.

A return to the ballot-box is not considered an option, as it would probably result in the FPÖ winning even more seats, going by the most recent opinion polls which place them now in the mid-30s. The other parties would be punished by voters for failing to do the right thing.

Commentators tend to describe the FPÖ as “far-right”, pointing to well documented past associations with Nazism. There’s been similar commentary on Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia and Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National. On close inspection, though, I see no overtly fascist ideology or policy in these parties’ present-day programmes. Hence I describe them as “conservative nationalists”, not “neo-fascists” – unless their future actions cause me to reassess that. Fascist policy would mean the glorification of war and the expansion of the nation’s borders, rather than protection or isolation. And it would mean a one-party State that reaches into every corner of society. Nonetheless, there are some worrying signs in some parts of Europe, such as the targeting of minorities, especially Muslims, and control of media as seen in Hungary. Meloni’s proposed constitutional reforms for direct election of Italy’s head of government, and an automatic majority for his/her coalition, also come under suspicion as they’d centralise power – although they’re ostensibly intended to remedy chronic political instability in Rome, which is a real problem.

Why are these nationalist parties leading in elections, then? Sociologist Frank Furedi takes their ideas seriously. In a recent post strongly critiquing mass migration, he writes:

“Whatever the motives behind the project of de-territorialising citizenship and weakening national sovereignty, it represents a grave threat to democracy and public life. Whatever one thinks of national borders, there can be no democratic public life outside their confines. It is only as citizens interacting with one another, within a clearly geographically bounded entity, that democratic decision-making can work. The demos has always existed in a bounded space. The nation state and its boundaries are not an obstacle to the development of the spirit of democracy – on the contrary, they are necessary for its realisation. Solidarity, trust, and the willingness to distribute social goods are accomplishments that are best achieved through a clearly-bounded common world where people understand their duties and obligations to one another.”

This goes against the neoliberal tide of global free trade and open borders – which incidentally had its intellectual roots in 1920s Austria. That neoliberal tradition reached high tide in the 1990s when leading exponents were predicting the demise of the nation-state. And lately there’s the extreme libertarian concept of a “network state” that leap-frogs territorial bounds and thrives on blockchain technologies.

Furedi helps us understand why working-class voters can be attracted to conservative nationalist parties. They sense the “social contract” – on which their economic security was founded – being undermined by the rootless universalism of international agencies and national governments that adopt open immigration and diversity policies – policies that the affected communities may not have asked for.

But to what extent could the likes of Furedi’s trenchant critique lend intellectual support to extremists who hate Muslims and subscribe to the “great replacement” theory, such as the terrorist gunman who attacked mosques in Christchurch in 2019? Is it normalising some genuinely worrying trends?

Centre-right and -left parties want the flow of migrants to continue, defending them on human rights grounds. The Right want to keep importing cheap labour, while the Left want to “celebrate diversity”. The latter in particular employ patronising or censorious language to gain compliance, implicitly saying, “Don’t speak your mind if you don’t want to be branded a racist or a Nazi”. This really gets up the noses of working folks. Once a political party makes it safe for people to express that irritation privately at the ballot-box, this new conservatism is on the way up, especially in Europe, delivering neoliberalism’s comeuppance. Stricter immigration controls, economic protectionism and industrial policy all come back into vogue.

While the Left thought that they would deliver the alternative to neoliberalism (and, yes, there are alternatives), the historical irony is that it takes a shift to the right to achieve it. Most centrist social-democratic and labour parties have been too afraid to tackle the actual injustices of the now dominant (post-Bretton Woods) economic model in ways that would make real differences to the livelihoods of working people. The self-perpetuating features of neoliberal policy settings, such as the fear of high interest-rates and threat of capital flight, have choked them. The rise of the “populist far right” can be understood as an effort to restore national solidarity and economic security – where the Left have given up the fight. Historical experiences, however, suggest that this kind of shift to the right may slide into a deep ditch.

Many New Zealanders oppose the rise of nationalist identity politics as seen in Europe. But ask almost any Kiwi whether their country should join the Commonwealth of Australia as a seventh state (which would be constitutionally possible) and you’ll probably get a “No”, despite the significant migration across the Tasman. (Similarly, I doubt that many Canadians want to join the US.) And prominent reasons for rejecting that proposal would likely be: distinctive national identity, self-determination, dislike of outsiders telling us what to do,… and of course the ABs. Other than the ABs, however, such responses resemble those given in favour of Brexit – only in reverse. In other words, nationalism is alive and well in New Zealand too – as you’d expect. That sentiment isn’t riled up as much in NZ as in the EU and the UK. But the essential current of public opinion is out there, represented by the populist centrist New Zealand First Party for more than 30 years now.

---

For more about neoliberalism, see:

.