Don't panic (yet) about President Trump: Column

Beware the radical right! Or must we? Right-wing political leaders across Europe are reaching the brink of success — and then most fall off the edge.

From France across Scandinavia and down to Greece, the far right (and in some cases a neo-Nazi right) is capitalizing on broad disaffection that is not unlike the malaise sweeping the United States and fueling the candidacies of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. But rarely have these candidates become their nation’s rulers.

This should be a warning for Republicans who want a winning nominee. There appears to be a natural ceiling on just how many voters are prepared in the final analysis to pull the voting lever or mark their ballot for extremes that none of these European countries has seen since the depths of World War II. Similarly, in the USA, last month's Associated Press-GfK poll found that 54% of voters wouldn’t consider voting for Trump.

There are common issues that have fueled the rise of Denmark’s People’s Party; Sweden’s Democrats, which began life in the 1980s as a white supremacist group; Austria’s Freedom Party and Greece’s neo-fascist Golden Dawn. Most oppose the European Union, and all have profited from the growing dismay over the tsunami of refugees that the civil war in Syria and the rise of the Islamic State terrorist group have sent rolling across Europe, not to mention the frozen economies in most of these nations. None of these parties has managed to take control.

In two other cases, however, these forces of nationalism verging on racism have catapulted such parties to power. In Hungary, Viktor Orban, leader of the Fidesz (“Alliance of Young Democrats”) Party, has succeeded in becoming prime minister. Indeed, one sympathizer urged several leading liberal writers, including Hungary’s last Nobel Prize winner, be stripped of their citizenship. “Whoever is born a Hungarian but damages and bad-mouths Hungarians when abroad can no longer be regarded as a Hungarian,” orchestra conductor Ádám Medveczky told a national television audience. Orban led the first boycott of Middle East immigrants last year, ordering the construction of an enormous barbed-wire fence along Hungary’s southern border. Sound familiar?

Poland is the other nation where the far right has managed to take power, Beata Szydlo becoming prime minister when her party snagged 37.6% of the popular vote. Which brings up a central issue that makes these European elections such a cautionary tale for fans of Trump and Cruz. Szydlo’s ultraright Law and Justice Party, actually led by the twin brother of the late former president Lech Kaczynski, won a majority in the Polish parliament only because of a curious proportional voting system under which the party with the plurality of the vote is awarded a majority of parliamentary seats. Its victory is sending a shiver across Europe because this is the first time a political group has come to power on a platform of withdrawing from the EU. Yet Law and Justice represents little more than a third of the Polish electorate.

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Across Europe, there have been similar numerical outcomes. In France last December, the ultraright, anti-immigrant Front National, led by Marine Le Pen, soared to a first-round victory in nationwide regional elections. A tremor went through the nation, and seven television satellite trucks stationed themselves in front of the headquarters of the ruling but thoroughly shaken Socialist Party. In the first round, with multiple parties on the ballot, the National Front claimed more than 27% of the vote, leading in six of France’s 13 regions. But in the second round, when moderate forces had a chance to regroup and the Front faced a unified opposition, it failed to win a single region, and its national vote hovered at the same 27% level.

It is a simple electoral reality. Across most of Europe, one-quarter to one-third of the voters are immutably able to support the far right. But the majority cannot bring themselves to do so.

So in Denmark and Austria, right-wing parties came in second in national elections. Greece’s Golden Dawn neo-fascist party managed a third place in two parliamentary elections last year. Much of the rhetoric of these ultraright parties might indeed find echoes here in America, where Trump has taken a hard line on undocumented immigrants and Muslim refugees.

Sweden’s 35-year-old Democratic Party leader proclaimed last year that “Islamism is the Nazism and communism of our time.” And Le Pen's father, National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, tweeted last weekend: "Si j’étais américain, je voterais Donald TRUMP… Mais que Dieu le protège!” ("If I were American, I'd vote for Donald Trump ... but God protect him!")

There is a certainly a parallel in the malaise that is forcing Europe toward a flirtation, at a minimum, with its darkest right-wing past. We can only hope that America’s flirtation also has its own natural ceiling.

David A. Andelman, a member of the USA TODAY Board of Contributors, is editor emeritus of World Policy Journal and author of A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today.

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