Europe’s far-right parties are anti-worker – the evidence clearly proves it | Cas Mudde and Gabriela Greilinger

Europe’s far-right parties are anti-worker – the evidence clearly proves it | Cas Mudde and Gabriela Greilinger

We analysed the voting patterns of far-right groups on eight issues including pay and tax. Their rhetoric is hollow

In the US and Europe, the far right is often portrayed as the defender of the working class, the representative of “forgotten” people or the post-industrialleft-behinds”. The working classes, so the argument goes, have flocked to the far right because “the left” has betrayed them. Moreover, far-right parties, it is claimed, have moved to the left on socioeconomic issues such as employment rights, replacing social democratic parties as the “new working-class parties”.

Despite the popularity of this narrative, including among social democratic elites in Europe, workers have not flocked to far-right parties, but rather to the mainstream right and the Greens. And now, our new study shows that while far-right parties might talk leftwing, they still back rightwing anti-worker policies.

Cas Mudde is the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia, and author of The Far Right Today. Gabriela Greilinger is a PhD student at the University of Georgia

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