Xenophobes of the World, Unite? French, Dutch Far-Right Weigh Alliance
Ahead of EU parliamentary elections next spring, FN leader Marine Le Pen is expected to travel to Holland next month to meet with Geert Wilders of the Freedom Party (PVV), about forming a united platform in Brussels to counter mainstream EU politics.
But while the far right has gained ground in some pockets of Europe lately, inspiring the ambitions of Le Pen and Mr. Wilders, their enterprise has been tried before and failed, in large part because of the contradiction inherent in nationalists trying to work together across borders.
“It’s difficult for a group of nationalists to come together on an internationalist platform,” says Hugo Brady, senior research fellow of the Center for European Reform in Brussels. “The minute they start doing that kind of stuff, they start resembling the mainstream parties that they claim to despise.”
A far-right surge?
Over the weekend Laurent Lopez of the FN, which fights against the “Islamization of France” but also recently rebranded itself as an antiglobalization force, won a seat in the Var regional council in France with 53.9 percent of the vote in a result that’s seen as an indicator of the national mood. And a recent opinion poll in France showed that the anti-immigrant FN could win 24 percent of the vote in EU elections, nearly four times its haul in the previous cycle in 2009.
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