The far right aren’t populists

Posted on June 19 2015

I am worried by the whole tone of an article in the FT this morning that reports the election result in Denmark. It begins:

Denmark is set for a change of government as parliamentary elections brought a surge of support for a populist, anti-immigration party.

So a party that seeks to make asylum really difficult, is seeking to limit immigration and which is offering far right policies is not even hinted as having that right wing stance but is instead referred to as 'populist'.

It's not an accident. The term is repeated in the article, which also says:

It remains unclear if the DPP would enter government or seek to support it from parliament as they did in 2001-11. But if they enter a centre-right coalition, it would mark the third Nordic country to have a populist party in government after Norway and Finland.

Every time I go on air I am a 'left leaning' commentator, or something like that. But the treatment of the right is very different. And now we're seeing the far right (and let's not pretend these people are anything else) not being described as such but being given the title 'populist'.

I find that profoundly worrying.

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5 Responses

  1. rob horton says:
    June 19 2015 at 7:40 am

    Do you know the difference between the words populist and popular?

  2. JohnM says:
    June 19 2015 at 9:29 am

    “Do you know the difference between the words populist and popular”

    Yes.
    Neither describe the far right.

  3. Lee T says:
    June 19 2015 at 9:41 am

    It seems that any political movement with an anti-immigration stance is defaulted straight into to ‘far right’ box. Even when their wider platforms, and their core support, come straight out of the old-school socialist playbook.

    Left-wing parties have moved on from much of the insular protectionism that characterised them in the past. And we can welcome that. But many of their traditional supporters have not.. and they’re not suddenly ‘far-right’ as a result.

    People on the ‘modern’ left just don’t understand why people who supported their parties in the past aren’t really on board with them anymore. This is why. Instead of engaging with them and constructively addressing the issues which are at the root of anti-immigration feelings, they are demonised and called ‘far right’.