Hate Can Be Defeated

The Far Right is vulnerable — here’s why

As the votes started to be counted in the Dutch general election, there was a moment of queasy realisation for Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party. The Far Right Express had come off the rails. Despite what the polls had been saying, when voters arrived at the ballot many of his former supporters had taken a hard look at what he had to offer and decided to turn away.

There’s a lesson here for all those facing a Far Right insurgency, in the US, the UK, across Europe. It’s easy to get caught up in the triumphal rhetoric of those who like polished jackboots, but it’s an illusion.

They are vulnerable.

Yes, even Trump.

Two years ago Wilders won a landslide that shook Europe to its core. The man they called the Dutch Trump was seen as a portent of what was to come for all the other Far Right parties pushing to break through across the continent.

This time was different. In the end Wilders’ party lost 11 seats, a significant number. Supporters abandoned him.

Dutch anti-fascists refused to celebrate too loudly. They pointed out that Wilders’ Freedom Party came in neck-and-neck with the liberal D66 which will undoubtedly form the government. There’s still a lot of Far Right supporters out there.

True. But while it’s wrong to be complacent, that response is a mistake.

It’s a process. When the Far Right has been in the spotlight, people see very quickly that being extreme on immigration does not solve their problems. Because immigration is not the problem. It’s a placeholder for something deeper

Wilders pulled no punches. He ran his usual red meat anti-Islamist campaign with immigration right at the centre. He’d previously called for a ban on the Koran. In this campaign he was demanding closed borders and a four-year-moratorium on asylum claims. His slogan: This is your land.

This time that hate just didn’t work at the same level.

Incompetence was certainly one factor, as it is for most Far Right parties, like Reform UK with its catastrophic management of the local councils it recently won. Wilders had been exposed after running a chaotic coalition which he blew up in a row over his extremist immigration plans. All major mainstream parties have ruled out going into government with him.

In contrast the liberal Rob Jetten took D66 from just nine seats to 25 with a positive campaign centred on “progressive patriotism”. Building not destroying was his message. His slogan: It is possible. Jetten’s approach resonated.

The peak for Wilders has passed. Now all he has to look forward to is a dwindling voter base and exclusion from power.

Every election has peculiarly local elements, but there is something universal in what happened in the Netherlands.

Hate isn’t sticky.

There’s a reason for that. While all these Far Right authoritarian parties imagine themselves as coldly efficient machines of cruelty and control crushing all before them as they establish their new reich, they’re actually a bunch of bumbling idiots who have to cocoon themselves in fantasies to protect their fragile egos. Rather than being summoned into power to reshape the world in their image, they’re actually surfing a wave of bewilderment. Their voices cut through because they shout louder and with clarity.

But the closer they come to power, the more the light shines on them and they are revealed for what they really are — frightened fools who can only survive in the modern world by pretending they’re strong.

Once voters see them in action, they start to think, hang on, they’re not going to solve my problems.

It’s not just in the Netherlands. In the US many people turned to Trump after reeling from years of economic change — from the financial crash through the pandemic. He promised an end to the status quo

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Only when people saw the real world results of his simple-minded rhetoric, his support fell away and continues to do so.

No one wants to go through four or five years of Far Right government to see revelation slowly dawn on the hard of thinking, especially when the repercussions could last for decades. America is not going to recover from Trump for a very long time. Brexit and Liz Truss is generational trauma.

What’s needed is to dam the river of hate before it seeps into government. And behind that lies one very important factor. While immigration has become the fuel for Far Right parties across Europe and the US, it’s not quite what it seems.

A few years back I was elected on to a local authority and went into the executive with portfolio responsibilities for social justice. That took me into the most deprived parts of the district, and as a post-industrial former mining community there were a lot of those

The area had deteriorated rapidly after the Thatcher government of the 1980s closed the coal mines, the life-blood of the area, yet provided absolutely nothing to replace them. Prosperity was snatched away overnight, along with security and hope for a better future.

In the absence of the main employer the district became vastly poorer. While this pushed many families into despair, the network effect was even more devastating. With no money to be spent, shops shut. Community centres became a parade of charity stores, betting shops and hairdressers.

The vibrant social life that tied the community together was hollowed out. Pubs closed. Working men’s clubs shuttered.

Crime rose along with addiction, family break-up, gambling, antisocial behaviour and suicide.

All this happened in just a few years, like a tsunami sweeping inland flattening everything before it. If you’re used to marshalling evidence and data, you can see the web of connections that led to this point — because everything absolutely is connected. The closure of the pits was the catalyst that triggered chain reactions moving in all directions at multiple levels.

But people mired in their lives don’t see that. To them it was once good and now it’s bad. They might half-heartedly say, “it all went wrong when they shut the pits”, but that was a few years ago and since then the cascading interactions are far too complex and require too much thinking when there’s neither the time nor, in many cases, the capacity.

They want a simple answer about why it’s bad now, not events from history. And there are always predators to fill that void.

One of the early conversations during my time in those deprived communities captured this. A man told me his neighbours couldn’t get social housing because the waiting list was too long. The same was happening at the NHS hospital where family members couldn’t get timely treatment.

And it was, he told me, all because of the immigrants overpowering the system.

I pointed out to him that this was the whitest district in the entire county. You had to drive miles before you saw a non-white face.

That didn’t matter. An influx of immigrants was the only thing that made sense to him to explain why things had gone from a working system to a failing one. Of course it was that. What else could it be?

Here and elsewhere immigration is just code for ‘the causes of this inexplicable change I see around me’. Racism of course makes it easier to accept, but even that is too simple. In these insular communities it’s a fear of anybody coming in from the outside and that’s an age-old story. When I was out in those deprived areas, people used to complain about white incomers from Birmingham — the big city — as much as they did brown people.

If hatred of immigrants isn’t really the driver, just a cipher to explain rapid economic change, then it’s far easier to solve by tackling the source of the initial anxieties. National targeted campaigns to rebuild the social fabric will reap huge rewards.

The Far Right aren’t going away. Geert Wilders will thrive in opposition because, like Farage and MAGA, his strength lies in pointing and shouting rather than actually doing. A fight will be required in election after election, endless trench warfare, but Wilders and his ilk are ultimately a minority.

Campaigners will have to get used to the fact that there will always be a solid core of every country’s population that is kind of okay with fascism. They’ll never be swayed, but they can be contained.

The trick is to peel off those voters who simply want answers and the improvements that come from them. And with the right will, and the right political leadership, that is eminently achievable.