The voters in two of the world’s largest democracies have spoken — and their message is clear.
Elections in India and the European Union in recent days have resulted in gains for politicians with strident nationalist messages. In some EU countries the out-of-touch elites are savaged. The middle ground is crumbling.
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi easily secured a second term, shrugging off a challenge from the Congress Party, which attempted to paint him as a threat to India’s secular pluralism, as voters responded to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) doubling-down on Hindu nationalism and anti-Muslim rhetoric.
Across parts of the European Union, some populist, euroskeptic and anti-immigrant parties benefited at the expense of the establishment over the weekend. In the UK — where most voters never expected to be taking part in these elections — the Brexit Party, led by arch EU critic Nigel Farage, swept the board. A similar result was seen in France and Italy, where Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) and Matteo Salvini’s League came out on top.
Those results come hot on the heels of an Australian election in which voters contradicted months of polling and chose to retain the right-wing government of Scott Morrison, an evangelical Christian climate change denier.
Across the world there has been a consistent shift to the political right, as voters abandon the center-left and centrist parties, which once held power in many democracies, after years of austerity and economic downturn.
In Europe, the turn to the right — with Britain perhaps being the best example — has been fueled by a desire to recapture past glories. Pro-Brexit lawmakers often talk of their project as if they are revitalizing the British Empire, exaggerating not only the role Britain plays today, but the one it would likely have as a small country detached from the wider EU bloc.
In India, Modi’s continued success has not been about yesterday’s successes, but tomorrow’s. Indians see themselves on the verge of becoming the next superpower, with Modi and his stridently nationalist BJP the best people to lead them there.
What these movements share, however, is an antipathy and even hatred for “the other” — more often than not a poor, religious minority.
There has been concern about the spread of violent Hindu nationalism since Modi came to power, while European countries have seen increased visibility for anti-Muslim and pro-Nazi groups, as well as mass protests against immigrants.
Rise of ‘populism’
Much of the focus around the European elections, in particular, has been on the rise of so-called populism across the continent.
Political scientist Cas Mudde has defined populism as a “thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups: ‘the pure people’ and ‘the corrupt elite.'”
In general discourse, however, this often involves the suggestion that wildly disparate parties — Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour in the UK, say, with Salvini’s far-right League — are somehow connected by similar policies, which upon inspection often boil down to: appealing to broad swaths of people in a way that media elites disapprove of.
As Anton Jager, an expert in political history at the University of Cambridge, wrote last year: “Historians and journalists have been quibbling over the exact meaning of the term populism — and who should and shouldn’t qualify as one — for at least 60 years.”
