Is Matteo Salvini's rightwing populism getting wobbly? Or is it uniquely potent?

Paul Taylor has a cautioously optimistic take on the possible weakening of rightwing populism in Europe, Has Europe reached peak populism? Politico EU 09/05/2019:

... a series of events and votes in Italy, Britain, France, Spain, Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic suggest the tide could be turning against the anti-establishment nationalist movements that have upended politics across the Continent, leaving the barbarians howling in frustration at the gates.

That doesn’t mean that the social and economic distress that turned many working-class, rural and poorer voters against the traditional political parties, the parliamentary system and the European Union has gone away. But the populists seem unable to secure a majority for their radical, anti-European course almost anywhere.

In thinking about authoritarian movements, it's important to be realistic in seeing both their strengths and their real limitations. But the difference between complacency and realitic optimism can sometimes be difficult to perceive. So can the difference between complacency and excessive pessimism. But in dealing with authoritarian movements will real strength, complacency is probably the worst attitude that pro-democracy voters and activists can take.

Rachel Donadio takes a look at The New Populist Playbook The Atlantic 09/05/2019. She describes his very recent setback when he tried to force new elections but was surprisingly thwarted by the left-populst Five Star Movmement and the center-left social-democrats:

The seemingly unstoppable momentum emboldened Salvini to put his popularity to the test. He withdrew his party’s support for the government, forcing a crisis in a bid for new elections that he hoped would make him prime minister of the first far-right government of a major European power. He didn’t get his wish this time. Instead, the Five Star Movement and the center-left Democratic Party - one representing the populist anti-establishment, the other the establishment - put aside their long-standing mutual animosity to form the strangest new government in recent Italian history, one with a sole purpose: to block Salvini.

But her analysis strikes me as exaggerated in describing the innovative appeal of Salvini. "He is not simply a Donald Trump facsimile in Europe, nor merely the archetype of an angry anti-immigrant nationalist in the Viktor Orbán mold. Salvini has been writing an entirely new playbook for 21st-century populism."

Donadio's article didn't convince me that Salvini has a strongly innovative approach to far-right demagoguery. But it's an in-depth look at Salvini and his movement that provides a much more detailed account than we usually see in the American press when it comes to continental European politics. She provides this illustration of how Salvini and his Lega party exploit a very legitimate issue, the EU rules banning procyclical Keynesian policies during recessions, and give it a rightwing, anti-Semitic spin:

Salvini and other senior League officials have said they want the EU to change its rules, including the one requiring countries using the euro to keep their budget deficits under 3 percent of GDP.

This would require changing European treaties, which is a long shot. It’s also too technical for most voters to comprehend. Instead, Salvini rails against what he calls a Europe run by “bankers, do-gooders, and bureaucrats.” And he often singles out the billionaire financier George Soros in conspiratorial tones. In Salvini’s speech in Milan before European Parliament elections in May, he accused some “elites” - Merkel, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Soros - of betraying Europe, and said Soros was paying NGOs to bring immigrants to Europe. Is his targeting of Soros not a classic anti-Semitic trope? I pressed [Lega spokesperson Claudio] Borghi on this. “Salvini talks about Soros because he’s a speculator, not because he’s Jewish,” he said. The Hungarian-born financier was indeed a currency speculator in the ’90s, but Salvini mentions him only in the context of immigration. Here Italy seems to be following Orbán’s Hungary: a country with few Jews but dog-whistle anti-Semitism. [my emphasis]

Salvini's Lega (the League) is also a Putinist party:

... it’s the only party in the country to have signed a cooperation agreement with Putin’s United Russia party, which it did on Salvini’s watch, in 2017. Sebastian Kurz’s People’s Party (ÖVP) in Austria and Le Pen’s National Rally signed similar accords with United Russia. (Kurz'

There's a flat-out mistake here. It was Austria's far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), not Sebastian Kurz' Christian Democratic People's Party (ÖVP), who signed the agreement with the United Russia party. The ÖVP and FPÖ were partners in a coalition government from 2017 to 2019. [Update 09/09/2019: The error has been corrected and acknowledged at The Atlantic website.]

After Le Pen’s party signed the agreement, it secured a loan from a Russian bank. The League has said that no money changed hands in its agreement.

Yet the relationship with Russia could damage the League’s credibility. In recent months, the Italian magazine L’Espresso and BuzzFeed News have published damning scoops about a meeting in Moscow last fall in which close associates of Salvini discussed an energy deal that allegedly would have diverted funds to the League ahead of European Parliament elections in May, in violation of Italian campaign-finance law. In July, BuzzFeed published audio recordings of the meeting - one of the clearest signs to emerge yet of how Russia is trying to influence and destabilize European politics. There’s no evidence that the energy deal happened, and Salvini and his associates have denied wrongdoing, but magistrates in Milan have opened an investigation. [my emphasis]

That's a reminder of an important one of many ways that far-right parties in Europe share themes and techniques and actively cooperate to some degree. Even though the notion of a Nationalist International is inherently strange, and problematic in practice.

Hillary and European immigration

The Guardian headline is jarring: Hillary Clinton: Europe must curb immigration to stop rightwing populists (Patrick Wintour 11/22/2018). I happened to be in Vienna on Friday, and the large news screen in the subway stations were showing a German version of it with Hillary's photo. I doubt anyone took it as a pro-immigrant statement on her part.

Here are some German-language headlines on the story: Clinton: Europa muss Einwanderung in den Griff bekommen Kurier; Hillary Clinton wirbt für Begrenzung der Einwanderung in Europa Schleswig-Holsteinische Zeitung; Clinton fordert striktere europäische Flüchtlingspolitik Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung; Hillary Clinton empfiehlt Europa Begrenzung der Einwanderung Der Standard.

Some further English headlines: Hillary Clinton Says Europe Must ‘Get a Handle’ on Migration to Thwart Populism New York Times; Hillary Clinton urges Europe to curb migration to stop populists Politico; Hillary Clinton tells Europe to curb immigration and stop populism CNBC

I'm going into some detail on this because it's important to the immigration issue and the fight against xenophobic anti-democracy parties and because of what it tells us about Hillary Clinton and her brand of Third Way centrist politics. Which, within the US Democratic Party, is not at all unique.

These headlines are obviously helpful to the xenophobes and damaging to pro-immigration advocates in Europe. But I also learned long ago to be careful about taking reporting on the Clintons at the face value of headlines. The historical journalistic malpractice by even the "quality" American media was well documented by Gene Lyons in Fools for Scandal (1996) and by him and Joe Conason in The Hunting of the President (2000). A trend that nevertheless continues. (Joe Conason, still debunking Clinton pseudoscandals 11/19/2017) But, first:

European Immigration and rightwing populism

Europe faces longterm immigration problems which can be legitimately described as a chronic crisis. The huge influx of immigrants in 2015 was an acute phase, the shock of which has been widely exploited by rightwing demagogues like Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to further their project of undermining liberal democratic institutions and the rule of law.

Recently, Orbán made a propaganda point by announcing Hungary will not sign a diplomatically significant but legally completely non-binding UN Global Compact for Migration scheduled to be signed in December at a summit meeting in Morocco. He was following the lead of like-minded authoritarian Donald Trump, who withdrew the US from the pact in December 2017. (Leonid Bershidsky, Immigration Politics Aren’t Really About Immigration Bloombereg Opinion 11/20/2018)

Austria's baby-faced Chancellor Sebastian Kurz jumped on the bandwagon in November, while Austria holds the current six-month rotating Presidency of the EU's European Council. And several countries have since followed up with their own rejection: Poland, Israel, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria. Australia has just joined the anti-Migration Pact group. (Joseph Berlinger, Australia joins US, Israel in refusing to sign UN migration pact CNN 11/31/2018) And notable last-minute controversies on signing the Migration Pact have arisen in Germany, Italy, Croatia, and Slovenia. (Fabian Urech et al, Diese Länder lehnen den Uno-Migrationspakt ab – oder zögern mit der Zustimmung Neue Zürcher Zeitung 22.11.2018)

But that's only a diplomatic manifestation of the real effects of the xenophobic wave headed by far right parties and groups in Europe. As we see in the United States, anti-immigration measures are often brutal for those affected and too often deliberately cruel. The Trump Administration's policy, supposedly abandoned for now, of kidnapping the children of asylum-seekers arriving from Mexico, is a prime examaple of performative cruelty for its own sake.

Another is the let-them-drown-in-the-sea policies that have been adopted by Italy's current government, formally a coalition with the left-populist Five Stars movement as senior partner and the far-right populist Lega as junior partner. When it comes to immigration policy, though, the Lega's Matteo Salvini is clearly calling the shots.

Once Libya became a failed state in the wake of the US-French-British military intervention of 2011, that country has become a major route for refugees trying to make it to Europe from the Middle East and Africa. The people-smugglers (Schlepper is the German equivalent of the Mexican coyote). The Schleppers often send the refugees into the Mediterranean Sea in flimsy and overcrowded boats.

The international Law of the Sea requires capable vessels who encounter ships in danger of sinking to act to rescue the people on the endangered vessel. Humanitarian missions have played a singificant role in rescuing such refugees coming from Libya. But anti-immigrant governments like Italy have been trying to interfere with such missions. Even Austria's Chancellor Babyface has joined that chorus. (Kurz setzt Schlepper und Hilfs-NGOs faktisch gleich Der Standard/APA 14.10.2018)

But Italy's Salvini in his role as Interior Minister has also taken the step of refusing to allow ships carrying rescued people to dock in Italy. This is an active discouragement to ship captains to follow the Law of the Sea and basic human decency in rescue situations. In practice, it really is a let-them-drown-in-the-sea policy.

And a report in the 17.11.2018 issue of Der Spiegel ("Tödliche Befehle"; English version: Raphael Thelen, Are Ships in the Med Ignoring Refugees in Distress? Spiegel International 11/21/2018) indicates that it is having that effect. It includes a report on the US Navy ship Trenton:

When they first saw the USNS Trenton, waves were already crashing into their inflatable boat out on the open sea. The 117 people onboard had crammed into the 12-meter (40-foot) vessel to escape the torture in the Libyan camps and to continue their journey to Europe. Now, they ripped off their T-shirts and began waving them and crying for help. Among them was Josef, a Nigerian man whose name we changed for this story. On this Tuesday, June 12, 2018, he was hoping for a new life in Italy, both for himself and his pregnant girlfriend.

But the USNS Trenton, a 103-meter, high-speed, twin-hull catamaran outfitted with a helicopter and surveillance equipment, did not turn toward the distressed migrant ship, but away. And soon, the U.S. Navy vessel disappeared over the horizon.

The boat began to sink, and people started to drown. "About half an hour later, a helicopter appeared and then three motorboats sent from the Trenton showed up. They pulled 41 people out of the water. All the others had drowned, including Josef's girlfriend and their unborn child. A total of 76 people lost their lives that day."

Thelen's article notes that it is "unclear" why the Trenton "did not provide assistance earlier." It may have been a legitimate judgment call by the Trenton officers. But the practical consequence was just as fatal. And, "Sicilian investigators are looking into the matter. A formal inquiry into whether the Navy failed to render assistance in an emergency had not yet been initiated." The US Navy, unsurprisingly, claimed they did nothing wrong.

And the effect of Salvini's anti-immigrant policy puts even more pressure on commercial craft who site boats in distress. Thelen quotes Jana Ciernioch of the NGO SOS Mediterranée saying that she "believes trade ships don't provide assistance because they are wary of spending days looking for a port of call now that Europe has closed its ports to survivors."

(For regularly updated information on refugees to Europe, see: UNHCR Operational Portal Refugee Situations.)

What Hillary Said

Hillary's immigration headlines followed on a series of interviews The Guardian did with three center-left political figures: Britain's Tony Blair, Italy's Matteo Renzi, and Hillary. Unlike Blair and Renzi, Hillary recently enjoyed a major political success: winning the popular vote in the 2016 US Presidential election by a margin of three million or so. Even though America's 18th-century Electoral College gave the Presidency to the disgraceful Donald Trump, her popular victory gives her opionions current political weight. And she could run for the Presidency againt in 2020.

Not surprisingly, what she said in the interview as quoted in the article cited above was more nuanced than the headlines:

“I admire the very generous and compassionate approaches that were taken particularly by leaders like Angela Merkel, but I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part, and must send a very clear message – ‘we are not going to be able to continue provide refuge and support’ – because if we don’t deal with the migration issue it will continue to roil the body politic.” ...

Clinton urged forces opposed to rightwing populism in Europe and the US not to neglect the concerns about race and identity issues that she says were behind her losing key votes in 2016. She accused Trump of exploiting the issue in the election contest – and in office.

“The use of immigrants as a political device and as a symbol of government gone wrong, of attacks on one’s heritage, one’s identity, one’s national unity has been very much exploited by the current administration here,” she said.

“There are solutions to migration that do not require clamping down on the press, on your political opponents and trying to suborn the judiciary, or seeking financial and political help from Russia to support your political parties and movements.”

Brexit, described by Clinton as the biggest act of national economic self-harm in modern history, “was largely about immigration”, she said.

Unfortunately, this is classic ”Third Way“ centrism. And some of the Social Democrats, including the SPÖ in Austria, are taking similar positions.

But this kind of posturing is the opposite of helpful for people in EU countries trying to get a realistic, pragmatic, and humanly decent immigration policy and to counter rightwing nationalism. EU countries need immigrants as much as the US.

It‘s doubly odd because she‘s also quoted in that piece being very blunt about how she thinks Trump voters just want to be told what to do. If she’s saying that, why can‘t she say that xenophobes need to take their heads out of their rear ends?

Her description here of authoritarian voters is fairly lead-footed. (I.e., supporters of rightwing populism have "a psychological as much as political yearning to be told what to do, and where to go, and how to live and have their press basically stifled and so be given one version of reality.") Which raises the further question: If she‘s saying stuff like this, why did she walk back her ”deplorables“ comment in 2016? She could have followed up the ”deplorables“ remarkt by responding to criticism with talking about some of the white supremacists and woman-haters backing Trump.

On the other hand, the excerpts from the interview reported in this article give a better picture of her critique of Trump's politics and its enablers, although it doesn't include further comments about immigration: Patrick Wintour in New York, The US media must 'get smarter' to tackle Trump, says Hillary Clinton Guardian 11/23/2018.

And another Guardian article gives some additional comments of hers on US immigration that provide at least more context (Patrick Wintour, Clinton, Blair, Renzi: why we lost, and how to fight back 11/22/2018):

Clinton articulated a position that she felt Democrats should adopt on immigration in the US, where there are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, as Trump exploits fear of migrants to inflame his political base.

Democrats, she said, must never stoop to treating migrants cruelly. “You deport the bad actors, you deport the criminals, you deport people who have some other kind of threat to our national security. People who have been here for a long time, you have a cut-off point and after that point, they have to learn English, they have to pay taxes, they have to follow the law, they have to wait in line, and you have a process.

“For people who then keep coming, you turn them back, unless they qualify for asylum, which has been in our law for hundreds of years.” [my emphasis]

After the Guardian excerpts were published, Hillary tried to walk them back a bit (Dareh Gregorian, Hillary Clinton calls for reform, 'not open borders,' in explaining European migration remarks NBC News 11/24/2018.

She struck a more immigrant-friendly tone in a Tweetstring:

I have always been and remain a staunch advocate of comprehensive immigration reform that’s true to our values and treats every person with dignity, provides a pathway to full and equal citizenship…

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 23, 2018

And she links to the text of an October 9 speech of hers on the subject, Remarks at Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, in which she says:

Of course, security and the rule of law must be upheld. Of course, nations have a right and duty to control their borders, in concert with their neighbors. But we can’t let fear or bias force us to give up the values that have made our democracies both great and good.

Our goal should be to build societies that are secure and welcoming, where everyone counts and everyone contributes – people who are newcomers to our lands and people who have lived in the same place for generations.

Which sounds pleasantly harmless. But her comments to the Guardian were of a different nature. It's hard not to read her statements there as classic Clinton "triangulating" advice: take the immigration issue away from the rightwing populists by adopting their position on immigration.

Obama as President tried something like the same approach. The theory was, crack down on illegal immigration and show the Republicans that you're serious about controlling immigration. And then that will make the Republicans more willing to agree to a more reasonable comprehensive immigration reform. To say it didn't work out that way would be wildly understating the reality.

At this point, it's hard not to agree with Nesrine Malik's verdict on Hillary's immigration comments: "as a response to the right it is a proven failed strategy, a race to the bottom where populists will only benefit from the endorsement." (Hillary Clinton’s chilling pragmatism gives the far right a free pass Guardian 11/23/2018)

Economist Robert Reich, Labor Secretary in the Clinton Administration, is also not impressed with Hillary's position on European immigration:

A win for EU law and democracy in Poland

Wolfgang Münchau's Eurointelligence Professional Briefing (Public Section) 10/31/2018 has an optimistic take on Poland's response to an important ruling by the European Court of Justice (EJC) in A further move in Warsaw to submit to the ECJ’s authority (scroll down).

The case in question had to do with a move made by Poland's authoritarian government to undermine the judicial independence of the Polish Supreme Court. As Jon Stone reports (European Court of Justice orders Poland to stop purging its supreme court judges Independence 10/19/2018):

Since coming to power in 2015, Poland’s right-wing populist Law and Justice governing party has pushed through a series of controversial changes to judicial appointments that critics say put too much power in the hands of the government and endangers the independence of the judiciary.

The numerous changes give the governing majority in parliament greater power over judicial appointments, while another new law also forced around a third of the country’s supreme court judges into retirement earlier this year.

This was a critical step by the Polish government in departing from the minimal standards of democracy required by the European Union for member states. Both Poland and Hungary are currently under "Article 7" investigations for such violations of EU democratic standards, the actions against the Supreme Court being the most pressing concern in Poland's case. (Maïa de la Baume and Dvid Herszenhorn, EU unpersuaded by Poland’s defense at rule-of-law hearing Politico EU 06/27/18)

The ECJ ruled that the changes violated European law. And the Polish government has agreed to abide by the ruling for now. The judges the government forced into retirement are now back and work and recruitment for their replacements has been halted.

A previous Eurointelligence briefing (Poland's local elections reveal deeply-split country 10/25/2018) noted:

The government in Warsaw continued as in the past to respond with mixed signals, saying on the one hand that it would respect EU law – and therefore the ECJ’s injunction - while trying to get Poland’s supreme court to invalidate the ECJ's ruling. Its argument is that the Polish constitution supersedes the ECJ's treaty-based powers in this case. We note that this dispute is not specific to Poland: the conflict about the primacy - or not - of the national constitution over EU treaties has for instance been brought repeatedly before Germany’s supreme court. The judges in Karlsruhe judges have until now responded with deliberately ambiguous judgments, maintaining a prudent judicial truce, and evading a clear decision about its own possible subjection to the ECJ. Will the Polish judges risk a fundamental conflict their German peers have until now done everything to avoid? And, if yes, how will the EU respond? What is at stake here goes way beyond the preservation of fundamental norms in Poland. [my emphasis]

As the 10/31/2018 briefing puts it, the represents a win for "a common view of the proper order of things" within the EU:

What if this common view is no longer shared to a sufficient degree by political majorities in each member state of the EU? Three things can happen. States can choose to leave. Disintegration can occur from within. Or the common view becomes a common order imposed and successfully enforced from above in a classic process of state formation. It is the third response that is at work in the EU — forget all the analysis being written about how EU integration has come to a halt.

The EU’s nascent fight against dark money and corruption, the halt to Poland’s judicial reform – these are just two of the manifestations of European power expanding its reach and moving to assert control in important and unprecedented ways. Is it a struggle? Of course it is. An easy one? Of course not. But it is a sign of the EU responding to challenges of a kind that were always going to be inevitable in a hugely expanded Union of 445 million inhabitants and 27 States, with more power rather than new weakness. [my emphasis]

Poland had regional elections last month, and the results were mixed. But they were certainly not a sweep for the rightwing populists.

The rigtwing populist Law and Justice Party (PiS, from the Polish initials) under its Chairman Jarosław Kaczyński is the dominant party at the national level. The 2018 regional elections were the first time in three years the PiS faced the voters' judgment. The results came out with 32% for the PiS and 44% for the two largest opposition groupings: Citizens Coalition with 27% and PSL (Polish Farmers Party) with 17%. (Clara Mode, Polen, wo bei einer Wahl alle Parteien gewinnen und keine verliert Standard 30.10.2018)

The current Polish President is Andrzej Duda of the PiS, elected in 2015. But Kaczyński is widely regarded as the power behind the throne.

The May 2019 EU elections are already getting a lot of attention. The rightwing populist parties In Europe have ironically used the EU Parliamentary elections as a way to build an anti-EU message and get recognition for their leaders. So hopefully the other parties will take the EU elections more seriously than in the past. And that seems to be happening at the moment. May will be a big milestone in current EU politics.

Ivan Krastev wrote earlier this year ("Eastern Europe's Illiberal Revolution" Foreign Affairs 97:3 May/June 2018):

Poland's government has also sought to dismantle checks and balances, especially through its changes to the constitutional court. In contrast to the Hungarian government, however, it is basically clean when it comes to corruption. Its policies are centered less on controlling the economy or creating a loyal middle class and more on the moral reeducation of the nation. The Polish government has tried to rewrite history, most notably through a recent law making it illegal to blame Poland for the Holocaust. [my emphasis]

He also notes that the rightwing populist regimes currently in power in Hungary and Poland display "a Janus-faced attitude toward the EU." That is, they bitch and moan about the EU. But they get a lot of money from the EU: "Poland is the continent's biggest recipient of money from the European Structural and Investment Funds, which promote economic development in the EU'S less developed countries."

This is at least analogous to the phenemenon we see in the US, where the Democratic states tend to be net contributors of federal revenue while Republican ones are net recipients, even though the Republicans actually want to reduce those transfers significantly.

See also:

• Jennifer Rankin and Christian Davies, Poland's first openly gay politician says progressives can win Guardian 10/23/2018
• Christian Davies, Don't judge Poland by what has happened here since 2015 Guardian 10/23/2018
• Bartosz Dudek, Lech Walesa: Poland's current leaders 'are either traitors or complete fools' Deutsche Welle 29.09.2018
• Pawel Sobczak and Pawel Florkiewicz, Defiant Kaczynski says Poland must avoid EU's 'social diseases' Reuters 09/02/2018

What does a democracy under internal threat look like?

This week's Profil (15.10.2018) has a story, "Abrisshirne" by Martin Staudinger and Robert Treichler, that I found really irritating. Which in this case, turned out to be a good thing, because it made me concentrate on the points they are making.

The topic is whether there is a world trend toward similar populist-authoritarian movements and governments. The title pages feature phots of Rodrigo Dutere (Phillipines), Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil), Nicolás Maduro (Venezuela), Matteo Salvini (Interior Minister and de facto head of government in Italy), Viktor Orbán (Hungary), Hein-Christian Strache (Vice Chancellor of Austria and head of the far-right FPÖ), Donald Trump (of course!), Tayyip Erdoğan (Turkey), and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, aka, AMLO (President-elect of Mexcio).

Putting AMLO in that list is pretty silly. he won the Presidential election in July and takes office December 1. Why he was included in that particular group as part of the "Populist International," as the caption called them is a mystery. I didn't follow the campaign closely, but my impression is that it was more a conventional center-left campaign rather than distinctly populist. More importantly, he served for five years as Governor of Mexico City (Federal District of Mexico) and built a reputation as an good executive who fought corruption. How that makes him a Duterte or an Erdoğan, I have no idea. The only thing the article itself says about AMLO is that he's an "erratic populist." Erratic? Why? It's sloppy at best to lump him into this group.

Nicolás Maduro can legitimately be called a populist. But, to put it generously, the constant American polemics against Maduro and Hugo Chávez before him as dictators was always overblown. Prior to 2016, international observers of Venezuelan elections under both Chávez and Maduro, including the Carter Center, regarded their national elections as legitimate with strong safeguards against fraud. The US is openly engaged in a regime change effort against the current Venezuelan government and Trump has threaned to militarily invade the country. And the US government always become intensely concerned about human rights and democracy in countries that it is preparing to bomb and kill lots of their people. Also, not at all incidentally, Venezuela has the largest known oil reserves of any country in the world. Anyone who think that hasn't been the overriding concern of American policy toward Venezuela is disregarding the entire history of US dealings with Venezuela and the rest of Latin America. Venezuela is a petrostate heavily hit for years by falling oil prices and facing a protracted period of civil disorder that makes it particularly difficult to compare Venezuela's situation in 2018 with any of the other country's whose leaders feature in the Profil rouges' gallery.

But Staudinger and Treichler do ask their readers to think more closely about just what features of a government make it democratic versus not-so-democratic. For instance, they point to previous worries about apathy among voters in liberal democracies, and note that voter participation has been rising. Because of the interest generated by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Without diving into the voting numbers here, it's a valid point that needs to be considered when we look at the antidemocratic trends their article highlights.

Don't be superficial about it, in other words.

Unfortunately, the reader doesn't come out from reading the article with any real guidelines on how to go about making that judgment.

The EU has started a formal review of the status of democracy in the member states Poland and Hungary. The EU does have a variety of standards for a country to qualify for EU membership, including things like democratic elections, a stable rule of law including politically independent police and courts, recognition of basic civil liberties and human rights, equal voting rights for all citizens. The EU also has standards for business law and regulatory practices. Unfortunately, after the 2008 financial crisis, the EU was far more focused on enforcing bad neoliberal economic policies than they have so far shown about enforcing democratic standards on member states.

The very legitimate concerns that have been raised about Poland and Hungary have particularly to do with the independence of the judicial system and whether the election system has been rigged so that the ruling party in practice cannot be voted out of office. Freedom of the press is also a major concern in both countries.

Some of these considerations are region- and country-specific. For instance, in the United States, public television receives relatively little public money. And the major news outlets are also not publicly funded and are generally businesses and some nonprofits. Governmental actions clearly aimed at punishing or restricting the functioning of independent, i.e., non-govwernmental, news operations raise real concerns about inerference with press freedom. But the federal government deciding not to financially support public TV, while that may be a bad decision, would likely not significantly reduce news coverage of public affairs.

The situation in Europe is different. Publicly-funded news media, organizationally structured to be independent of day-to-day political interference, are a major source of public news. The BBC in Britain is generally seen as the model of this approach. Other such public news operations include ARD and ZDF in Germany and ORF in Austria. Drastically reducing their public funding or trying to turn them into partisan outlets would negatively affect the availability of professional, independent news available to citizens.

A different situation is presented by Latin American countries like Argentina in which news media is broadly in the hands of oligarchs and often present news with a strong partisan-political slant. In that situation, a center-left government that uses public media outlets for news and documentaries with a viewpoint friendly to, or at least not hostile to, the elected government couldn't be said in itself to suppress press freedom. Independent public news organizations on the BBC model would improve news coverage and expand freedom of the press in those situations.

A final observation on comparing far-right political movements is that looking at international connections and interactions between those groups and parties. Far-right parties in EU countries interact on an individual basis with one another. And there is an umbrella European party represented in the European Parliament that connects some of those parties in a more formal way. And Putin's Russia is actively encouraging the far-right populist parties in an effort to undermine the EU.

[01/24/2018: Updated for clarity.]