Weirdest political take Iāve ever had, but European far right leaders arenāt ādollar store Trumpsā. Unfortunately, theyāre often fairly smart individuals, with great academic records and very well regarded in their areas of expertise. Very unlike Trump. Which makes them all the more dangerous, because they donāt make the same mistakes that Trump somehow gets away with on the regular: no real life actions that go against their purported ideals (cheating or banging pornstars, for example), no blatant involvement in corruption or financial crimes either. Even in the way they speak, theyāre often vague enough in their (authoritarian) statements that they can still claim to hold democratic ideals and get away with it.
I donāt think the UK is a great example of European politics, simply because UK politics is more akin to US politics than to any other European countryās politics. Despite the UK technically being a multi party system, in practice it often acts like a two party system.
Outside of the UK, thereās many European countries - letās say, as an example, Portugal, Spain and France - which have historically been governed by moderate parties, either on the center right or the center left (left and far left respectively on the American political compass), which have fundamentally failed to solve the respective countryās problems.
Portugal, for example, has been ruled by its Socialist Party for most of its democratic existence. Despite that, itās currently dealing with chaos in its healthcare system. Thereās a general lack of doctors, hours long emergency wait times, years long surgery waiting lines, all because of a fundamental failure in creating a good way of financing the healthcare system. Governments in Portugal, both socialist and center right ones, have until recently mostly agreed on the idea that healthcare should be free. But Portugal has never been very successful economically - which means supporting a free healthcare service has always been way more expensive than the country could financially handle. For a long time the problem of financing the healthcare system was simply postponed. But now itās reached a point where many of its hospitals are in debt, itās been unable to give any raises to any of its staff for years, these staff have been leaving in droves for the private sector, itās been incapable of financing many medical acts, in many hospitals even basic maintenance has been indefinitely postponed, etc.
While I still fundamentally agree with you that people are fools to trust the far right, I do understand why thereās such a big distrust in traditional moderate parties, given how much theyāve recently fucked up in dealing with many of the core issues in our countries - regardless of whether theyāre on the left or on the moderate right.
I didnāt mean to say they have insightful thoughts, but instead that theyāre smart in the way they position themselves publicly and politically. AndrĆ© Ventura in Portugal is a good example. He has a doctorate in Law, is clearly a smart individual despite often playing a part of almost āanti-intellectualismā. He could easily fit in the description of your typical academic intellectual while somehow managing to gather the support of those who hate academic intellectuals.
He grew politically within the main center right party - a fact which he uses to claim that heās not actually far right - and eventually jumped out of it and created his own party, arguing that his old party was part of the āestablishmentā - which he claims to be against. In truth, he left his old party because he had reached his political ceiling - his more extreme views meant he wasnāt realistically ever going to attain the kind of influence he wanted within a center right party.
Now, he offers no insightful thoughts of course. He often contradicts himself, changes positions wildly depending on the crowd or on the weather, offers no viable solutions to any of the problems he points out. But heās very good at jumping on any mistake made by the bigger parties and capitalizing on those. He often points out the mistakes that everyone can recognize, exaggerates smaller issues to paint the parties in power as incompetent and then follows up with the dumbest solutions you can think of. But thatās the thing - since he isnāt in power, his solutions donāt actually have to resist the test of being implemented, they just have to exist. He can act like he has the solution to everything.
Publicly, he often toes the line of whatās āacceptableā speech, so he can both appeal to his more extreme supporters but simultaneously paint the idea that heās actually a reasonable guy whoās unfairly vilified by the media and āthe leftā. In truth, like Trump, he grew up in part precisely because of how much the media insisted on attacking him - while giving him exactly the attention he wanted. As a somewhat funny stat, the lowest rating his party has had amongst the public in the last few years was during the pandemic, when the media was so focused on talking about Covid that his party practically disappeared from the public eye for a few months. In the last election theyāve got a really good result, so now theyāve officially become a permanent problem. They now have to be treated like a ānormalā party, whether people like it or not.
Iād argue Meloni is a good example in terms of political intelligence as well. She has been able to successfully paint herself as a sort of reasonable and pragmatic far right leader, unlike any of the previous Italian far right leaders, which is a big part of her success. She claims to be pro-EU and is openly anti-Russia - contrary to her predecessors - which might seem like minor positions but have actually been very important for her to paint herself as a sort of far right leader thatās not that far right that she canāt work together with other European leaders. This is also important for many Italians since many see the EU favorably and a far right leader which is at least able to cooperate with the EU ensures that Italy can keep getting EU financing and can keep its influence within the Union. In practice, she represents the same ideas previous far right Italian leaders represented, but she tossed out many of their crazier positions in order to appear moderate by comparison.