have gone from fringe to front-row. Once treated as political
poison, they’ve now been sanitized, mainstreamed—and most
shockingly, handed the keys by the very parties sworn to keep them
locked out. So what the hell happened?
Right now, deep inside Berlin’s coalition war rooms, migration
is the issue lighting everyone’s hair on fire. Christian Democrats
(CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD) are in a heated race to
out-tough each other on immigration reform. But the result? A
complete boomerang. Instead of halting the rise of the hard right,
Germany’s legacy parties are rolling out the red carpet. The only
winner in this game? Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)—a
party that, not long ago, was exiled to the political wilderness
and is now making a full-throttle push for the big leagues.
And no, Germany’s not some outlier. This is Europe-wide. In the
UK, Sweden, Austria—every time traditional parties try to hijack
the talking points of the far right, it backfires. Voters just end
up flocking to the real deal.
The Firewall Collapses
For years, Germany kept its distance. There was a kind of
unwritten firewall—an across-the-board pact among mainstream
parties to steer clear of any alliance with extremists. It was a
badge of democratic honor. But now, with the 2025 Bundestag
election looming, that firewall is cracking. And the wrecking ball
swinging at it? None other than Friedrich Merz, the CDU boss and
would-be chancellor.
It was Merz who brokered a tactical alliance with AfD on a
hardline anti-immigration bill. Publicly, he framed it as about
“border security.” But behind closed doors, the calculus was clear:
poach some votes from the far right. The result? A political
faceplant. CDU’s numbers nosedived from a steady 30–32% in January
to 28.5% on election day. Meanwhile, AfD soared.
Merz played a game that’s claimed plenty of players before
him—thinking he could undercut the radicals by echoing their
message. Instead, he handed them legitimacy. Protest voters didn’t
buy the knockoff—they went straight to the source.
When the Mainstream Becomes the Megaphone
The playbook is old, but it still works like a charm. In times
of political burnout, elite fatigue, and rising social tension,
protest voting dominates. People don’t vote for—they vote
against. And they pick whoever promises to “clean house”
the loudest. That’s right in the far right’s wheelhouse.
But this isn’t just about backlash votes. The far right has been
playing the long game. They’ve been working the grassroots, beefing
up their media game, and polishing their image. Gone are the
bald-headed skinheads with “Germany for Germans” signs. In their
place? Suited-up, camera-ready “new politicians.” Take AfD’s Alice
Weidel—ex-banker, technocrat, international resume. Clean-cut
packaging. Same old xenophobic core.
This is what scholars call mainstreaming—when ideas
from the political fringe seep into the center. But they don’t
sneak in alone. They’re ushered in, often by the very institutions
meant to keep them out. Instead of fighting the message, centrist
parties end up parroting it.
Rebranding Hate
The secret sauce of the far right’s success? A slick rebrand.
“Germany for Germans” is out. In comes the polished euphemism:
“remigration.” No longer “deportation,” but a “return to the
homeland.” Not ethnic cleansing, but “restoring social justice.”
The vocabulary’s had a makeover, but the ugly truth underneath is
untouched.
Every hard-right outfit that made it big pulled the same move.
France’s Rassemblement National (National Rally) under
Marine Le Pen ditched Holocaust denial. Sweden Democrats dropped
the flaming torch logo and replaced it with a dainty flower.
Italy’s Lega swapped separatism for an anti-immigration
chorus.
None of these parties actually ditched their radical roots. They
just slapped on better PR. And here’s the kicker—every time
mainstream parties dabble in that same rhetoric, they’re not
fighting extremism. They’re branding it as respectable.
Feeding the Beast
Mainstream parties keep falling for the same illusion: that they
can flirt with far-right themes and come out on top. But the record
is brutally clear—when centrists try to co-opt extremism, they
don’t neutralize it. They supercharge it. And they alienate the
moderate base they still depend on.
The real irony? You don’t even need a full-blown crisis to set
this off. No mass migration event. No economic collapse. Just
relentless noise. That’s how it worked in Sweden. The Sweden
Democrats made immigration the issue—without any surge in
actual arrivals. They just kept hammering it. Nonstop. Day after
day.
When France’s far-right party pulled in 13.6% of the vote back
in 2017, the establishment breathed a sigh of relief—crisis
averted. Fast forward to the 2024 elections? That number jumped to
33%. Same platform. Same ideological core. Just a new face, a new
tone—and a completely different political landscape.
Political scientists Aurelien Mondon and Aaron Winter called
this out years ago. In their seminal work Reactionary
Democracy, they mapped out how Europe’s democracies are
bulldozing the lines between the acceptable and the
extreme—mimicking the very forces they’re supposed to oppose. Their
thesis is a warning shot: “In trying to stop the radicals,
centrists start speaking their language. And lose.”
Soft-Face Fascism: When the Center Started Talking Like the Far
Right
Spooked by the thought of hemorrhaging voters, traditional
parties across Europe have been playing a dangerous game—trying to
steal the script from the far right. Tighter borders. “Cultural
threats.” Identity politics cloaked in nationalism. But what they
don’t seem to grasp is that this copycat strategy doesn’t neuter
the far right—it normalizes it. It blurs the line between
mainstream and fringe, until that line disappears altogether.
It’s not chaos. It’s choreography. On one side, the far right
swaps jackboots for jackets, torches for talking points. “Germany
for Germans” becomes “remigration.” On the other, legacy parties
quietly adopt the lingo, the fear-mongering, even the conspiracy
theories. It’s not a descent into extremism. It’s a handshake with
it.
Jean-Werner Müller, a political theorist at Princeton, calls
this the “gateway effect.” The idea? Far-right parties don’t need
to sell the whole package. They just need one clean, relatable
entry point. Maybe it’s skepticism about climate change as a threat
to “individual freedom.” Maybe it’s the old “migrants are draining
the system” trope. Once that seed is planted, the rest
follows—quietly, methodically.
France: Where the Center Gave Up the Fight
Nowhere is the surrender more shameless than in France. In 2021,
Emmanuel Macron’s own Interior Minister accused far-right icon
Marine Le Pen of being too soft on immigration. The
following year, center-right candidate Valérie Pécresse
name-dropped the “Great Replacement”—a conspiracy theory straight
out of white nationalist manifestos.
This wasn’t containment—it was coronation. Le Pen didn’t get
marginalized. She got mainstreamed. Macron’s approval tanked. Le
Pen surged. And talking points that once sent shivers down Europe’s
spine were now coming from cabinet ministers, major newspapers, and
presidential candidates.
Sweden: When Liberals Got Cozy with the Far Right
Sweden—once hailed as Europe’s liberal conscience—started its
rightward drift over a decade ago. In 2013, Moderate Party
immigration minister Tobias Billström kicked off a national
campaign to scale back immigration. Ten years later, his party had
lost a third of its base and clung to power only by striking a deal
with the Sweden Democrats—a party with neo-fascist roots.
Now, that very party is shaping Sweden’s immigration policy. Its
popularity? Up to 23% in 2024. The Moderates? Slipping to 16%. Even
Sweden’s Social Democrats—the center-left that once defined
Scandinavian values—have started co-opting anti-immigrant rhetoric
just to survive.
The result? The Overton window hasn’t just shifted—it’s jumped
the tracks. The center, once the anchor of consensus, has
vanished.
Belgium: The Blueprint for Losing Everything
In Belgium, the pattern plays out like déjà vu. The New Flemish
Alliance—the country’s largest party since 2009—tried to outflank
the far right by veering right itself. The payoff? They got
leapfrogged. Far-right parties surged to 23%, seizing the top spot
for the first time in history.
Same formula: the center mirrors the fringe, the fringe becomes
the center.
The UK: Brexit Wasn’t a Revolt. It Was a Merger.
Back in the ’90s, UKIP looked like political satire. Cartoonish
nationalism, crank ideas, fringe appeal. But its talking
points—“take back control,” anti-immigrant screeds,
EU-bashing—eventually wormed their way into the Conservative
Party’s bloodstream. Brexit wasn’t the people rising up. It was the
mainstream bending down.
Now, the very party that swallowed those ideas—the Tories—is
circling the drain. Their polling sits at a feeble 20–22%. Reform
UK, UKIP’s direct descendant, is hot on Labour’s heels. The
Conservative playbook? Pure Farage. Culture war theatrics. Attacks
on human rights advocates. Full-blown anti-migrant hysteria.
What’s left isn’t conservatism—it’s cosplay. A hollowed-out
party structure lurching between populist slogans, stripped of
principle or purpose.
Berlin, Spring 2025: The Rightward March Continues
Back in Berlin, the CDU—the recent victors—are following the
same script. Their messaging is all about “order,” “security,” and
“control over migration.” Translation? They’re inching closer to
the very people they once vowed never to touch.
The Social Democrats, too, have toned things down. You won’t
hear them echoing AfD talking points—at least not yet—but their
once-vocal defense of migrant rights has gone radio silent. Just
like their faith in the political center.
The CDU and SPD have already cut off talks with the Greens,
calling them “too radical.” They’re not ready to deal with the AfD.
Not publicly. But in backroom chatter, political insiders are
gaming out the scenarios where even that taboo crumbles.
No Brakes, Just Panic
Analysts aren’t mincing words. The far right is rising—not just
in Germany, but across Europe. And the cordon sanitaire? It’s
eroding fast. Traditional parties aren’t standing their ground.
They’re sliding rightward. And this isn’t strategy—it’s a skid on
black ice.
Daniel Sachs, founder of Sweden’s DSF think tank, calls the
current trend “ultra-right mimicry.” And he says it’s political
suicide. Instead of standing their ground, centrists are parroting
the slogans of extremists. Instead of offering an answer, they’re
copying the question. The result? Voters bail. The fringe gains
ground.
Sachs argues for a different path—what he calls “radical
centrism.” Not appeasement. Not adaptation. But a return to hard
boundaries—between democracy and demagoguery, between mainstream
and fringe, between normal and dangerous.
But those lines aren’t just vanishing in parliament. They’re
blurring in the press too.
The Media’s Unwitting Role in Normalizing the Extreme
The far right loves to scream about the “liberal media,” “fake
news,” and “corrupt journalists.” But here’s the twist: it’s the
media—often unintentionally—that’s helping launder their image.
A team of political scientists looked into The
Guardian, a center-left staple, and found a troubling trend.
The word populism had become a PR tool. It replaced
sharper terms like “racism,” “xenophobia,” and “extremism.” The
result? A sanitized narrative. One that made these movements sound
like just another political option instead of a real and present
threat.
When you call a far-right party “populist,” it doesn’t sound
scary. It sounds relatable.
This sleight of hand makes what used to be authoritarian, even
fascist, seem palatable. By framing these groups as populists—not
radicals, not fanatics—the media dulls public alarm. A mask of
normalcy hides the face of ideological extremism.
The Center Is Erasing Itself
A clear-eyed analysis of party rhetoric, media narratives, and
coalition strategies in Germany, France, Sweden, Belgium, and the
UK reveals one unmistakable trend: a continental drift to the
right. Not a glitch. A pattern.
— In Germany, the CDU/CSU is steadily absorbing the language of
“control” and “crackdown,” wading deeper into AfD territory.
— In France, a Macron minister accuses Marine Le Pen of going soft
on immigration, while the center-right “Republicans” casually
invoke the racist “Great Replacement” theory.
— In Sweden, the once-dominant Moderates have ceded the immigration
debate to a party with neo-fascist DNA.
— In Belgium, Flemish conservatives have been
outflanked—obliterated—by hard-right populists.
— In Britain, the ruling Conservatives parrot UKIP rhetoric,
hemorrhaging voters while blurring the line between politics and
parody.
And through it all, the media claps—or stays silent. Even
criticism, when it comes, echoes in the register of populism.
There is a cure. But it’s bitter.
Political scholars and democratic theorists have proposed a path
out: redraw the lines. Reclaim political clarity. Reinforce the
language of democracy. But in today’s politics, that sounds more
like a fairy tale than a feasible playbook. It’s easier to cosplay
as a radical than to risk looking like a loser with principles.
The real punchline of Europe’s rightward turn? The far right
isn’t winning. It’s being handed the win.
The issue isn’t where the line is. The issue is who’s brave
enough to draw it again—and stay on the right side.
These aren’t isolated episodes. They’re symptoms. And they all
point to the same diagnosis: the liberal center’s inability to
defend itself. The more it tries to please everyone, the more it
ends up caving to the loudest voices in the room. Resistance is
replaced by imitation. Leadership by mimicry.
Each time a mainstream party borrows far-right language, the far
right doubles down and gets bolder. This isn’t opposition. It’s
oxygen.
And as long as democratic elites keep chasing the illusion of
dominance by shifting right—aping the rhetoric of “threats,”
“national identity,” and “lost control”—they’re not saving
democracy. They’re diluting it. The far right doesn’t need to march
anymore. It’s already in the chamber.
The far right in Europe didn’t seize power. They were ushered
in—by the very hands that once vowed to shut them out. Traditional
parties, paralyzed by the fear of losing power, opened the door to
forces that once couldn’t win a city council race.
While the CDU and SPD scramble to sound tougher than the AfD on
immigration, the hard right keeps rising. That’s not a warning
sign. That’s a system failure. Or worse—maybe it’s the plan.
The real question now isn’t whether this train can be stopped.
It’s who’s still willing to pull the brake—before Europe forgets
where the center even was.