Rise of Europe's Right Is Good News for Jews This Ti...

By Tom O'Connor

Senior Writer, Foreign Policy & Deputy Editor, National Security and Foreign Policy

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A top Hungarian official tasked with combating antisemitism has told Newsweek that the rise of right-wing political forces that has swept Europe in recent years would serve to protect the continent's Jewish population, reflecting major shifts that have occurred in the political landscape in the decades since World War II.

During an interview that also touched upon Hungary's relationship with the United States and the Russia-Ukraine war, Hungarian Minister for European Union Affairs János Bóka reflected on the ascendance of rightist political forces, often referred to by the country's own conservative government as "patriotic parties" and some of whom Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has openly supported.

The trend has elicited some concern from the largely liberal institutions that still dominate the EU, with some evoking parallels to the nationalist-populist swell that fueled the rise of antisemitic fascist movements such as the Nazis of Germany. But Bóka asserted that Europe's political architecture has been dramatically upended in the near-century since that era, with the true threat to Jewish livelihood on the continent now emanating from extremist left-wing and Islamist political entities.

"I am fully aware of Europe's burdened history when it comes to antisemitism," Bóka told Newsweek. "And I'm fully aware of the role of the old extreme-right parties in this process. I also believe that currently Europe faces very different challenges. I believe that if Jewish communities in Europe are looking for safety and protection, the only place where they will find this comes from the political right, comes from the patriotic parties."

"I believe that now the real antisemitic threat that is politically relevant comes either from radical Islamism or comes from the radical left, who is in some kind of a very strange political coalition with the radical Islamists," Bóka said. "And I believe that only the political parties on the patriotic side can have the strong political and ideological base to draw a red line and say so far and no further."

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The Rise of a New Right

Orbán was among the first to lead the charge on the early manifestations of this shift in Europe's political ecosystem, having first been elected premier on a conservative platform for a single term in 1998 before returning to office in 2010. Since then, right-wing movements have won unprecedented post-World War II electoral gains after a prolonged period of marginalization in many countries.

Upon winning office in 2022, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni formed Italy's most right-wing government since the era of Benito Mussolini. And the far-right Freedom Party of Austria came out on top in the latest vote last year, while Germany's Alternative for Deutschland and the Netherlands' Party for Freedom both secured the second spots in their respective elections in February and October.

Such progress has spurred establishment parties to muster up broad coalitions to avoid including far-right representation or at least leadership.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron took the drastic measure of dissolving parliament and triggering snap elections in 2024 in response to the right-wing National Rally's first-place success in European parliament elections. Romania went so far as to suspend the results of its presidential election that handed victory to a right-wing independent last year, citing Russian interference and leading to a second round in which a centrist ultimately won.

Meanwhile, right-wing populists successfully made their way to power this year in Belgium and the Czech Republic, signaling that the sea change for Europe is far from finished and may only be starting to take hold.

The reasons for this wave are many. Bóka viewed the primary driver as being linked to questions over the goals and orientations of the European integration project led by the EU, the Brussels-based supranational entity that counts 27 member nations.

Unlike the United States of the former Soviet Union, the EU is comprised of independent states, though they share common legal, economic and political frameworks. Many of the right-wing parties that now claim nearly a quarter of seats in the European Parliament argue that the centralization of these policies has gone too far.

"I believe it has to do with the fact that now on the European level, and when it comes to EU politics, the main dividing line between political communities is not the traditional right-left division, but a federalist approach versus a patriotic or sovereign approach," Bóka said. "And I believe that this is basically the translation of the feeling that is there among most Europeans that that their future, their fate, is slipping out of their hands."

"They feel that they are losing control of their destiny, because they are being told that now decisions are no longer taken on national levels, but they feel that they have no way to influence decisions taking on a supra-national level," he added. "And they want to retake control of their destiny. They want to take back control as we could see. And I think that this is being translated into EU politics and national politics as well."

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Ideologies at a Glance

The forces leading this upheaval are extremely diverse and vary substantially on ideology, influence and stated intentions. Most broadly, many of them channel nationalist-populist sentiments, adopting anti-establishment attitudes buoyed by popular discontent and frustration over the EU's perceived overreach in managing the affairs of member states.

Some common talking points concern calls for stricter immigration controls, cultural preservation and skepticism toward aid to Ukraine (though Italy's Meloni has proved to be one of Kyiv's staunchest allies). In some cases, leaders have taken direct inspiration from President Donald Trump's "America First" brand and "Make America Great Again" movement to galvanize citizens toward rejecting the prevailing political consensus.

Unlike in past eras, no major movement explicitly endorses an antisemitic platform, and many openly reject such historical comparisons. Still, some parties, such as Germany's Alternative for Deutschland, the Freedom Party of Austria and the Netherlands' Party for Freedom, have been accused of channeling Nazi symbolism and messaging in their campaigns, though such allegations are often denied.

Orbán, who leads the Fidesz party, has also been accused of using antisemitic tropes, namely through campaigns citing Hungarian-American financier George Soros—a Democratic donor and philanthropist who has often been the subject of conspiracy theories—for domestic purposes. However, the premier, who has denied allegations of antisemitism, has gone through extensive efforts to portray Hungary as a safe haven for Jews, around 100,000 of whom live in the Central European nation. Bóka has played a key role in this effort, having long spoken out for the need to address antisemitism and being named special envoy on the issue in May.

Hungary has sought to further fortify this position by striking up a close partnership with Israel, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who currently heads the most right-wing government ever in his country's history. After the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant on Gaza-related war crimes charges that Netanyahu deemed antisemitic, Orbán defended his Israeli counterpart and announced in April that Hungary would be exiting the Hague-based court.

Netanyahu, who leads the world's only majority-Jewish state, has backed the Hungarian approach of directing the focus of antisemitism concerns toward the left and its perceived coalescence with Islamists. The Israeli premier has frequently branded EU nations recognizing Palestinian statehood amid the conflict as antisemitic in nature and has pointed to left-wing activist sympathies with the Islamist Palestinian Hamas militant group as proof of the unlikely partnership.

Hamas has also forged a coalition with a variety of other armed groups that include far-left factions. The militant group launched the October 7, 2023, assault that sparked the war in Gaza, after which swelled a wave of global antisemitism in Europe and beyond, including among some pro-Palestinian activists.

The concept of a "new antisemitism" driven by left-wing movements has been a major source of discussion in the 21st century and has largely been tied to debates over anti-Zionism. In the United Kingdom, allegations of the center-left Labor Party tolerating antisemitic rhetoric led to the suspension of its then-leader, Jeremy Corbyn, in 2020. He has denied the allegations.

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'Demons' of the Past and Present

There is another key issue through which Bóka and many other proponents of the "patriot" popularity boom view their movement as being on the right side of history.

Immigration has long emerged as a leading flashpoint in European politics. A decade ago, in 2015, the United Nations documented one million refugees and migrants entering Europe, marking the largest movement of people to the continent since World War II and spurring sharp backlash from conservatives and nationalists.

This migration has traditionally had its roots in conflicts and crises taking place overseas in Africa and Asia, yet the Russia-Ukraine war—the deadliest in Europe since World War II—has sparked a new mass wave of refugees from within the continent. While the EU and many member states profess support for Ukraine, they have at the same time begun to institute growing restrictions to limit the influx.

Hungary has long been at the forefront of this movement but has since been joined by nearby nations such as the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, who jointly reject the EU's liberal policies on migration and asylum. Even German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, head of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, that thus far kept the far-right from power, recently called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to curb the flow of young men into Germany.

It's not just the large-scale fighting or mass displacement of people in Europe that has evoked imagery of World War II surrounding the conflict in Ukraine. Both sides frequently accuse one another of attempting to revive Nazism, with Russian President Vladimir Putin identifying the "de-Nazification" of Ukraine as a primary goal of the so-called "special military operation" that has ravaged the neighboring nation for three-and-a-half years.

And unrest continues to plague other parts of the globe as well, with a report issued earlier this year by the Peace Research Institute of Oslo finding more active conflicts around the world in 2024 that any point since World War II. The Institute of Economics and Peace came to a similar conclusion in a separate report this year.

Nationalist rhetoric has been weaponized against Jews in the past, but Bóka says he views the current climate as creating a situation in which the parties advocating for tighter migration rules were in fact working to keep out foreigners from bringing antisemitic views to European nations.

"I also believe that only these political parties and only this political community can design and implement a migration policy that will actually stem and control the demographic and the social changes that run the risk of changing the social fabric of Europe, that will lead to further strengthening of antisemitic discourse and policies in European countries if it is not stopped," Bóka said.

"So, I believe that we should turn this whole question upside down in saying that, while it is it is important to fight the demons of the past, it is even more important to fight the demons of the present," he added. "And I believe that only the patriotic parties are in the position to do so in the interests of the Jewish communities and to protect the Jewish communities and the Jewish heritage of Europe, which is part of our European Judeo-Christian civilizational pillar."

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