196. Why are the far-right on the rise?

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25:47Welcome back to the rest's politics with me Rory Stewart. And me Ernst Campbell. And one thing I said that I'd really like, we both like to do, is to encourage people to pick up on some of our leading episodes, which are these interviews that we have done with world leaders, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, some amazing recent interviews. If you want to understand Israel Palestine and the two states solution, got interviews coming on cop and climate. Probably I think some of the best ways of understanding the issues of our era and encountering some fascinating people is through the rest's politics leading.

26:21Would you agree? Fundamentally disagree Rory. I think it's absolutely. No, I do. And you know, I find it a bit weird that we get, we've had far more listeners for you and I, blathering on about the Middle East, say. And I'm not saying we don't kind of know a bit about it, in my view. But actually the feedback we've had for the last two on leading with Simon C. Bagmontifuri historian, Antonio Clouc, who has worked for both Israelis and the Palestinians, has been phenomenal. Before that side of Wassie and Palestinian Ambassador, so there's been a lot actually on the hip -proport. We do a lot more.

26:55So yeah, and then if you go back a bit, people like François Hollande. Yes. Tony Blair. Yes. Mary Maca -Leese. Yes. So yeah, people should check it out. I think you'd, you'd enjoy it. And there's something for everybody. There are public intellectuals, there are writers and thinkers, there are heads of state, there are former primers, there's people at Hillary Clinton taking you into the center of the war room when she's making, when the calls are being made on the attack on the Sun, bin Laden, etc, etc. So give it a go. Excellent. Now, shall we talk a little bit about Mr. Vilders in Holland, Mr.

27:31Millay in Argentina and also these shocking rights in Dublin? Where do you want to start with all that? Well, let's let's start with an atlas and the victory basically of hair, the Vilders, whose extraordinary organization, which isn't quite a political party called the PVV, has just taken the largest amount of seats by a big margin. So just a little, still relatively small proportion though, 37 out of 150. Yeah. So just an introduction to the Dutch electoral system because it's fascinating. I mean, it is pure proportional. So 150 seats, if you can get 150th of the vote, 0 .8 % of the vote, you get a seat.

28:12And it has been run by coalition governments almost forever. And it's been a very, very rigid system. Hair, the Vilders is famous for being the longest serving member of the Dutch Parliament, but he's only been in since 1998. And this is partly my friend, Monix Amont, who teaches at Yale points out because being a Dutch politician is unbelievably boring. I mean, to put it in contrast, the founder of the house, when I was in the House Commons, his latest 2019 Ken Clark, have been in since the early 70s. So the fact that the longest serving MP's only been in since 1998 gives you a sense of it. And the reason it's so boring is that everything is run on a party less system.

28:51So much so that Monix jokes that you might as well just have one person representing the party in Parliament because there's absolutely no disagreements within these parties. Does it make you less keen on social representation? Well, I think definitely this form is bizarre, really bizarre. And they signed coalition agreements where they have over the last few coalitions specified every single law that they're going to pass. So there's actually literally no point in Parliament at all. If you're in the government, you vote with every law that was agreed three years earlier, and if you're in the opposition, you vote against it.

29:24The reason we have this election is because that system broke down under the last coalition. And it breaks down when a surprise happens. If something that wasn't in the agreement happens, suddenly it breaks down. So Holland, moving forward, has gone through, I guess, what's happening in a lot of European countries. We broadly speaking, had three big parties, had a Labour Party, a Liberal Party, which is the party whose Prime Minister has been in for the last four elections. And it had a Christian Democrat party. And these three parties sort of dominated Dutch politics for a long time, and then it began to fall apart.

30:03And the left in particular in the Netherlands has really collapsed. If you put together all the left -wing votes in Parliament, they're only about a third of the seats. And that's largely because the traditional manual working class has completely deserted the left, just as they basically deserted the Socialist Party in France. And I think it's a problem for the STP in Germany as well. So, you know, Rotterdam, for example, which is a kind of big industrial port city, which was their bastion, doesn't vote for them anymore. Instead of which, those votes have begun to go towards far -right anti -immigrant parties of which, here at the Vilders Movement, is a big example, every...

30:42I mean, it's right, we pin him on the far right, but he started out as an advisor to Rotter, the outgoing Prime Minister, and it was when Rotter started to talk about supporting Turkish accession to the European Union that Vilders decided not for him and off he went. He's been around, as you say, for a very long time. I think he looked utterly stunned on the night of the election. And I think there's a warning in here for all parties that have way ahead in the polls, including Labour, actually, because it's interesting how many young people voted for him, and also how many people voted for him who didn't vote before.

31:19And I suspect a lot of people who told pollsters they were going to vote for somebody else. But the other thing that happened is that the Rotter's successor, who's a woman from Turkish immigrants background, she became the first of those sort of mainstream party leaders to stay, well, yeah, maybe we could do some sort of arrangement with Vilders Party, which in a sense, I think, pushed people who maybe were a bit reluctant to vote for Vilders, they, oh, well, he can't be that bad then. And I think that was a huge mistake by her. Now, we've got a very messy, remote friend, Jan Agafjortov, who's a Norwegian football and now commentator.

32:00And he said he'd like to hear his favourite podcast, he called it, talking about why we think what are the positive reasons that people vote for people like Vilders and Millay? And I've been trying really hard to think of it. I think a lot of it is a protest vote. But I think if you look at Trump, make America great again, I think it's they've somehow managed to capture alongside this vote for us against them, a sense almost of optimism. Hmm, provided you stick with in your own culture. Which was true, actually, of course, of Boris Johnson, because he, you know, for as many floors that we keep talking about endlessly, projected this sort of boostrish optimism, and a sense of things that we don't get done.

32:43And the problem, of course, always with the centre, is because it's been running things since the, I guess, the 90s. It always gave an impression of defending the status quo and defending the status quo often involved saying, well, it's all too difficult. You know, we can't really do this. We can't really get immigration under control. We're not allowed to do that. So politicians who say nonsense to that, we can change things are really important. And head to Vilders is, of course, not the first to these guys in Dutch politics. Pym fortune. Pym fortune. That's why the way Vilders, one of the reasons why Vilders has been for years, really surrounded by strong protection is not allowed windows in his office, because they're worried somebody will pop him off.

33:22That's right. He's exactly, he lives this very, very odd life. So Pym fortune, very different figure from head to Vilders. He was much, much more intellectual, much more flamboyant, very openly gay and celebrated his sexuality, as well as being radically anti -Muslim. And that gives you a sense of how different Dutch populism is to American populism. So there's no space in Dutch politics, for example, in the way there is in the US, for being anti -abortion or taking on LGBTQ issues. But you do have that in some of these, but like all that part of hishtic is very much, and that's what it's so called conservatism.

33:56Absolutely, but in the Netherlands, being on the far right is largely about Islam, and this began with Pym fortune. And again, it tells you something, again, I'm quoting my friend, Monix, about what Dutch tolerance means, because Dutch tolerance, going all the way back towards religion, didn't really mean liking or understanding the other side, it meant despising them, but leaving them alone. And there seems to be, its dominant culture is aggressively secular. And there's a sort of sense of total incomprehension of Islam. And Pym fortune really developed this. He said Islam is completely incompatible with secular, liberal progressive values.

34:37Vilders has lent him to that. He's also, of course, I talked about leaving Euro, leaving the EU, he seems to like Putin. He's interested in banning the Quran on the Selon and public. He's already retreating on quite a lot of these things. And saying he wants to put them in the fridge, he's just saying to leave my crazy ideas in the fridge. And that's what I presume is because he's trying to see what sort of coalition he could form. I think when he's 137 seats, which is fair for you more than those who came second and third, I think it's fair to say you can have the first go. Several of the parties already said no way they're going anywhere near him.

35:11That could create his own problems. I think he has to be Prime Minister. I think it's almost, in, I mean, I think you're right, constitutionally, theoretically, the liberals and the left could gang up and stop him becoming Prime Minister. But I think for the people who voted for Vilders, that would be such a catastrophic. But it's interesting how he's already trying to unwind, a bit like Malone has done it, Italy. Orban is the only one who survived the long time, actually. You know, Orban is now the longest serving European Union leaders. And he will be looking at this and thinking when it comes to the next European elections, he'll feel the right is on the march.

35:50He'll also feel that some of the policy in Ukraine, he can start to shift and also some of the policy on budgetate, particularly at the moment where Germany's in this complete economic mass due to the constitutional court. So part of that plan. So I think it's very likely he will become the Prime Minister and people are being too optimistically thinking, well, I think the coalition will be him with 37 seats. The old liberal party of Mark Rutger with 24 seats, the NSC with 20 seats, that's Omskirt, who's this very interesting figure who is ahead in the polls until two weeks before the election.

36:21Absolutely. And who were talking about because he'd come out of this scandal around child benefits, he'd broken, very unusually in this very kind of conventional, follow the party with politics, he broke with the Christian Democrats over the system and effectively the Christian Democrats turned their back on him and cheated him out of his ability to win the election. And out of nowhere really took 20 seats, which again is very, very difficult in the Dutch system. Again, on on Vilders, this is also reminiscent, I believe, of what happened with some of Frashe's parties. He doesn't have a proper political party.

36:55There's only one member of Vilders' party, which is himself. There's no party democracy. These MPs aren't allowed to speak unless he gives them permission. So literally, he chooses the candidates, there's no party members, and they can't look at his finance as properly because he's only technically an association not a political party, so he doesn't come out of the normal campaign finance rules. I see that the guy that he's put in charge of the coalition negotiations has already had to step down through some scandal. And this is what often happens to these hard -right leaders. We've seen it here whenever the BNP have got into local power that they tend to founder when it comes to actually governing.

37:29Now, Vilders, as you say, is a very experienced politician. Maybe he will prove as wrong on that. I'm not so sure that part of the driving of a deal in the coalition might be that he won't be prime minister. I think some of these parties might say, well, the only way we're going to do this is if you're not the prime minister. Yeah, or he waters down a great deal. Then loses a lot of the support that he's had. Drops most of his right -wing stuff, but probably keeps big restrictions on migration asylum seekers refugees. Yeah. Probably expels Muslim clerics, which will be popular with his base. But drop all this banning the Berk, shutting down mosques.

38:04Yeah. Now, one of the things though that might be worth watching is that he won't push ahead with a referendum because he probably wants to get the farmers party the BBB on -side, and they're absolutely believed that Dutch farmers are on the side of you. Both he and Le Pen. If there's one thing they've learned from Brexit, it's that it's not a very sensible idea. So they're both watered that down already. But he may well be no more European union accession. He may be no to European budgets. So he may be a problem for Europe. I think this is a good transition to Millay in Argentina. I've noticed from our conversational traffic and on the residence politics, what's that group?

38:41You're rather obsessed with his peruque. Absolutely amazing. And I think it's a big insight that we need to share with the world. I think it's almost on the level with my great idea that if you've lost something, it is where you think it is. The insight is that populism is all about hair. And Millay is actually known by our citizens as the wig. People draw comparisons between his ridiculous hair and Donald Trump's ridiculous hair. And Michael Fabricant. Amazing. And these politicians make huge jokes out of their heads. So I'll say again, get the villas, the populist leaders just taken over and out.

39:15Platinum died. Platinum died. And the Dutch newspaper says the most famous proxides since Marilyn Monroe. Johnson to. So I think there's definitely, definitely maybe not a whole book, but it's definitely a good article to be written on hair and populism. Well, I can't do it possibly. I can't do it. But Millay, a bit like villas, is finally is having to reckon with some of the consequences of his crazy apologists. And again, we don't know. So again, I was talking to an Argentinian who was very much saying, thank goodness we got him. Millay, it's the only hope for the country. Yes, he seems crazy, but a lot of it is a joke.

39:51Call complacency. Exactly. And I think the questions we move to Millay is, are we to be reassured by the fact that when they come in, everybody says, well, they're not quite so bad as people thought they watered down their policies or actually they're bringing quite good advisors and it's the people I haven't done. Exactly. And he's not dead. Exactly. And of course, without overdoing it, when some of these nationalist fascist movements took over in Europe from the 20s and 30s, there was a real tendency in the only day to say, oh, it's not too bad. They're probably going to be more moderate when they're in power.

40:22I don't know if you can place it at all. We should put in the news that you're a piece I saw in the conversation from a guy called Orelia Mondon who I'm assuming is French or Belgian, but anyway, he's at the University of Bath. I think he sort of thinks people like you and I possibly have fed into this by the constant use of the phrase populism. And I have in the past have worried about this because populism sounds quite popular. His, his, his, his, his, you know, if you're a populist, that means you're doing things to please the people. What's wrong with that? Whereas what he's think is his, his argument is that the far right is a dangerous political force and that the mainstream has done far too much to pander to it rather than challenge it.

41:06And I think that's what I was saying, perhaps, about the, the leader of Rutgers Party when she started to say, yeah, maybe. And when we talk about, you know, these people have legitimate concerns, which a lot of, for a lot of people, it's just racism. So I think that there's, we'll put it in the news letter is, it's a very interesting read suggesting, basically, that will, neither builders normally are shocks that actually we should have seen them coming. And in fact, we have seen them coming, but haven't worked out how to handle them. One of the, the things that we just talked about in the transition is this, what they call livelihood security in the Netherlands, which is the housing crisis.

41:40And it's partly because they have a green belt too. They have issues around night's shim pollution. You know, many, many young people are now living with their parents or they're living in camper vans. And of course, very unfairly, the right of blaming asylum seekers for the absence of housing. It's very familiar story, which we can see in Britain. But the litmus test, I think, really for all of this is going to be the French elections, because marine the pen is not going to have to need to compromise if she becomes present in the way that people like villas do. So the downside in this form to electoral systems of the PR system is that these people can get seats in parliament.

42:18The upside is that they're then forced to do a lot of compromises in order to try to keep her. If lapan manages to become president, she has as French president astonishing. As Macron has found, you can be hugely constrained by the national assembly. But I guess if she's going to win the presidential election, then, you know, the national assembly is probably going to shift in certain directions away. By the way, when I saw Francois Hollande recently, he said something very, very interesting. He said, he wondered whether with Brexit, Britain had hit peak populism, but the rest of Europe has yet to hit it.

42:55Now, I saw somewhere, Fraser Nelson, the spectator, saying that the great thing about Britain is that we don't have a populist party with representation in parliament. And I think that is rather to overlook the nature of the current government. I think we have a populist government. And I actually think soon, like, is becoming his own way as populist. Johnson. No, so I'm going to challenge that. I don't need anything like as populist as Johnson. I think the, and I don't think we have a populist government, nothing like what we're talking about with lapan. You think the problem is, you think the problem is like that?

43:24No, I think the challenge, there I was about to come onto that. I agree with you that the real question is, what do the conservatives do after the election? And I also agree that if they perform particularly bad in election, it will almost certainly be because they're flirting far too much with the populist right and not. And that's the point that there's not a problem about is making. But I also think Olaund is onto something I think compared to Vilders or Le Pen or Maloney. That's weird. And the film. Yeah, no, no, no, and it's also not just a question about the conservative party. It's also something very interesting about the Labour movement in Britain because we've talked about how the left has collapsed all over Europe, lost its working class voters, and in the cases like Holland or in Israel, the left has all but disappeared.

44:09It's barely a third of the vote. Whereas actually in Britain, the traditional left in the former Labour is holding up. So Britain does seem to be a bit of an exception, but that's always worrying because the long -term trends are the same in Britain as they are in Europe and the United States. And I think we may just be delaying this moment. Well, let's talk a little bit about Ireland and Dublin. I did a bit of pedultery the other day, Roy. I was interviewed on a podcast which presented by Mehar Martin for Matyshek, now the foreign minister in the Irish government. And he actually asked me on to talk about my book and populism, polarisation post truth.

44:50He asked me on before the riots, by the time we did the interview, it was in the middle of these riots until I tell it's about the riots. So there was an attack on some children and a carer, quite a bad attack. What does it mean? It means some Irish citizen assaulted some children. Correct. Why? Because they, we don't ever know. I don't know. And then the news got out. And then, like wildfire, somebody who, interestingly, I think he called himself Danny Boy on social media, but he did a minute -by -minute account of the messages that were going out from these far -right groups, including in Britain, including in different parts of Europe.

45:30So the world went around straight away that this is immigrant who's killing our people, Ireland for the Irish, Ireland first, then people on the far -right in Ireland with the following, essentially saying to people, come out, yeah, without, they obviously just, most of them, just the right side of the law, but essentially urging people to come out and fight. And literally within next to no time at all, there were buses being set on fire, police officers being attacked. And all based on a lack of knowledge, deliberate disinformation about what had actually happened. It's very strange, isn't it, Ireland?

46:08Because, you know, we were there together a couple of weeks ago. It seems to have a very, from, from an outsider's point of view, very mature, successful moderate government. It's had an amazing economic success story. It's leading European indicators across the board on a lot of key things. And yet it's also a place that, as we talked about, Sinn Fein, which is a very clear populist party, is now performing very, very well. And in which things like this happen. So even in one of the real success stories of Europe, with a very moderate government, you can see under the surface. Oh, yeah. Well, Miguel Martin in the interview that we did, he said that it's always been there.

46:44It's always been there. And, you know, admitted that kind of immigration was for these people was a real problem. Now, the other thing you notice when you're in Dublin, as opposed to say being here in London or any of the big cities in the UK, it's remarkably white. You don't, you kind of, if you see non -white people, you tend to notice them. So the fact that that could happen in those circumstances. And by the way, my favorite part of the whole horrible episode was the fact that the guy who stepped in and risked his own life to try and sort this thing all out was a Brazilian delivery driver.

47:19And the good Irish people have now been setting up tons of funds for him to become, hopefully a very wealthy delivery driver. But I think it just goes to show that, as you say, even in countries that we look in from the outside, I've got a very romantic attachment to Ireland, most of my experience of Ireland is through the Peace Pro Ceres, it's through lots of nice trips there and lovely people that I know. So it did come as a genuine shock. But I also think that both Meal and Leav Radke, Leav Radke made a very, very good response to it. He wasn't doing what that guy from Bath University is saying.

47:53He really was totally calling it out. These people do not speak for Ireland, they do not represent Ireland there. And he wasn't doing that thing of, you know, we understand the relationship we can get into. And I think we need a bit more of that challenge against his hard right stuff. Now, finally, before we finish, you quite rightly wanted us to talk a little bit more about what's going on in Africa. And we haven't really had a chance to do that. I mean, there's been an attempted coup in Sierra Leone, which has been really interesting because remember, we've had eight coups in Africa and just over a year.

48:25Is it you're including interesting? I mean, it didn't happen at the end. Clearly, units of the military seem to have tried to seize barracks. The current president himself was a brigadier who was involved in the military coup in the 1990s, but has now a democratically elected person. Sierra Leone suffering from many problems that are across Africa. I mean, huge inflation, huge hardship, massive youth unemployment, 60 % poverty. But the reason why it's worth looking at is it's a different part of Africa from where the great belt of the coups happened, which is across the Sahel. Look at him out.

49:02Sierra Leone is much further down on the west coast. And it's again, an example of the real fragility. In fact, it's a fascinating interview that the current president, Sierra Leone, gave to Al Jazeera, maybe not worth watching the whole thing. But it is amazing way Al Jazeera does this, did long, patient, long form interview with the president, Sierra Leone. About 15 minutes through, he's challenged on his own participation in coups. And he said, oh, yes, well, the coup that I'd in the 1990s was a good coup because you know, this government was corrupt and uselessness. And then four weeks later, they're trying to coup, they tell him, anyway, that then brings respect to Sudan and every year.

49:37Well, just not just on Sierra Leone though. I mean, part of the tension that's there is the fact that people are rather worried about how he won the election. So it's not just that he was involved in a previous coup. It's just that there's a lot of concern about whether he's kind of legitimate. Which is true in many, and this is the sad truth. I mean, we've talked about thin democracy before. We were understandably so excited by the movement of the world towards democratic elections in the 90s and 2000s. But for many people in these countries, the fact that there are elections is not very reassuring because a lot of these elections seem to be stolen.

50:10Power remains very concentrated. The economy is not performing. And that actually means that sadly, many friends of mine, I have who follow these as he's closely, don't really lament the disappearance of these democratic governments. Well, that's one to watch. And the other one, I think, which briefly should just talk about because we talked last week about how Ukraine, people are worrying that Ukraine is being forgotten with all that's going on in the Middle East. But Sudan is utterly horrific what's happening there now. And we've talked before about this civil war between the armed forces of government and these rapid support forces.

50:45There was again, Al Jazeera, there was a report the other day about this violence in Darfur that was, it was horrific to watch and interviews with people describing what had happened to them. And it was, it was honestly as bad as anything that we were seeing coming out of Israel and Gaza. And yet it's almost as if the world's media can't cope with more than one big thing at a time. So, so quick reminder on Sudan, the long standing president was toppled in a coup. There was a brief civilian government. And then basically there was a military coup. And then the two big generals in the military ended up fighting.

51:23There's the traditional military, which is run by a man called El Borhan. And against him is this man called Hamethi, Muhammad Hamdan, who runs the rapid support force, who is associated with a very disturbing group, which emerged in the 2000s called the Janger wheat militia, who represent primarily more nomadic pastoralist groups. He spent part of his youth as a camel herder from a tribal background. And we're used as these sort of militia groups in Darfur on these attacks, which people will remember, all the people remember, will the great human rights atrocities championed by people at George Cuny in the 2000s.

52:02And now the fighting has spread to Darfur. Again, we've got over 5 million internally displaced people, 1 .2 million Sudanese pushed across the border, many tens of thousands have killed. And again, a story that we have told when we have been analyzing Libya, for example, of proxy wars, because the hearts of this is the United Arab Emirates. So this man, Hamethi, was used by the UAE to fight in Sudan. They brought him over, paid him lots of money to bring over Sudanese mercenaries effectively to fight for them. In Yemen, partly with their support, he then got the major gold concessions in Sudan.

52:41So he's become a very, very rich man and his brother runs his company's out of Dubai. UAE has then given a 1 .5 billion dollar loan to Chad, put that context in time, budgeted a Chad a year, it's less than a billion dollars. And in return has been allowed to set up a base on the Sudan border, which has a sort of a hospital in it for public show, but with very few patients, but is basically a supply base for landing weapons, which are then moved over to Hamethi to back his side in the war against the Sudanese military. Were the Wagner group not involved in that as well? And the Wagner group are also supporting Hamethi and also brewing weapons and central allies.

53:19So this is really, really upsetting, obviously, for the US, the UK, who are part of something called the Quad with Saudi, which is supposed to be bringing, and UAE, which is supposed to be bringing peace. So UAE that's meant to be part of this alliance for peace is actually funneling weapons into one of the size just as they were funneling weapons in Libya. And meanwhile, Qatar emerging as the great broker in the hostage release is in the least. And of course, Qatar also has had a very complicated history because Qatar has also had close allies with particular factions in Somalia has allied itself with different groups in Libya.

54:00So this is, it does feel at times much more not sort of Cold War, more sort of 19th century in the politics where you have a dozen countries interfering in other states playing these sort of complicated games. And in the case of UAE, it's partly about then putting a lot of money into after they're buying mines and Congo, they're building ports all the way along the African Red Sea coast. They're making huge financial loans to governments. We shouldn't maybe keep plugging out of the zero as much as we do, but that is the only place where I've seen significant coverage of either of these two situations.

54:40And the other thing, I was actually channel hopping the other day and Fiona came in while I was watching the Alder Zero coverage of what's happening in the Middle East. And she made the point that you get a completely different picture to what you'll get watching. And I'd say most much of our news, I mean, it's horrific a lot of the time, but it's actually quite sanitized. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff that you'll see on Alder Zero, which we're not seeing. No, they're very unspoken. I mean, this interview with the Sierra Leonean president, the interviewer is much, much more blunt about what he remembers of seeing the atrocities and certainly injuring some of all of these little little shout out to Declan Walsh, who's a very good British, I guess possibly British American journalist for the New York Times who did some incredibly detailed reporting on the UAE support.

55:24And the New York Times still has the funds to do some amazing investigations. They use satellite imagery to compare the footprint of these UAE bases to the bases that they've been building in Libya and they then used air trackers to follow in every plane. And it's extraordinary sort of almost like a kind of intelligence operation. Well, on the New York Times being an intelligence organisation, we shall end this, so he's rested on a take. Thank you. See you next week.