The far-right in Europe has been quite different than the right-wing in American politics. Putting aside the usual caricature of “people in pointy hoods and the Ku Klux Klan,” Marine Le Pen said she still believed “the American right [was] much more to the right than the National Front.” She may have agreed with those who wanted to manage American frontiers more effectively and prevent massive illegal immigration, but she was also a big believer in the state’s ability and obligation to help its people. “We feel the state should have the means to intervene,” she said. “We are very attached to public services à la française as a way to limit the inequalities among regions and among the French,” including “access for all to the same level of health care.”[1]
Therefore, it can be concluded that American right has been more far-right than the European far-right has been in terms of government having a responsibility to take care of people in need, even providing a survival-net so that no one need go hungry, homeless, and without medical-care. Of the latter, it took President Obama, a corporate Democrat, to widen the net on medical insurance, though even he caved to the private-insurance lobby, which threatened it would withdraw its support unless the president dropped his support for a public option.
So from an American standpoint, it is particularly striking that the European right has consistently advocated universal health-care. To the American right, even a “public option” for government-run health insurance can only be odious socialism, which in turn, if generalized, could bring down the Union. Moreover, the American rich who retort, “I don’t want to help others with my tax dollars—just defense,” is absent from the E.U.'s far-right. This point demonstrates a real cultural divide between the E.U. and U.S.
In terms of federalism, the “Euroskeptics” have been much more skeptical of the E.U. than the state rights advocates in America have been of the federal-level of governance in the U.S. Even though in both unions secession movements have resulted from the Euroskeptic ideology, it has had more influence in terms of the constitutional design of the E.U.'s federal system as well as in European politics. For example, the governor of Hungary came to the defense of Poland when the federal Commission went after the latter for subjugating the judiciary to politics. In terms of federalism, the European right is more to the right than is the American right.
Immigration is another policy area in which the European right is further right. France's president Sarkozy’s attempt to send the Roma out of his state makes Arizona's Jan Brewer’s proposal to allow her state's police to verify the citizenship of people already involved in a police action seem down-right moderate. Whereas in the spring of 2011 the Danish government considered putting up border guards to keep African immigrants out, the Arizona government did not add border guards of its own in 2010. To be sure, U.S. President Trump did exactly that in 2018, perhaps to keep certain peoples out or to stop drug-trafficking and illegal immigration. In European far-right politics, going after particular peoples already legally in the E.U. has been fair-game. In the E.U. state of Belgium, some establishments in the Flanders region as late as 2010 have brandished signs stating “No Walloons Allowed”—similar to “No Blacks Allowed” in Alabama until the 1970s. It would be interesting to compare racism in the E.U. against Africans with racism in the U.S. against Black Americans (who go by the misnomer of African-Americans, which is an ethnic rather than a racial designation).
Perhaps it could be said that whereas culturally and in terms of federalism the European right has been more to the right, the European value of solidarity has moderated that far-right appreciably, whereas the right-wing in American politics has known no such moderating factor. Therefore, caution should be exercised when comparing seemingly-parallel parties in American and European politics. The two unions have rather distinct politics even though “right” and “left” apply to both unions.
For more comparisons, see Essays on Two Federal Empires, available at Amazon.
For more comparisons, see Essays on Two Federal Empires, available at Amazon.
1. Tracy McNicoll and Christopher Dickey, “What a Tea Party Looks Like in Europe,” Newsweek, September 6, 2010.
