Category Archives: The far right

New French PM seeks to send strong message on law and order

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Gabriel Attal attempts to set tone as Macron government tries to counter rise of Marine Le Pen’s far-right

The new French prime minister, Gabriel Attal, has sent a strong message on law and order on his first full day in office, visiting a police station and promising to deliver security to “responsible working French people”, who he said wanted calm.

“There is no security without our police,” said Attal on Wednesday outside a police station in Ermont in the Val-d’Oise, setting the tone for his attempts to counter the rise of Marine Le Pen’s far-right.

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Gabriel Attal becomes youngest French PM as Macron tries to revive popularity

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Attal, 34, rose in opinion polls during his time as education minister and may help ruling party in EU elections

Emmanuel Macron has appointed France’s youngest-ever prime minister, Gabriel Attal, as he seeks to reinvigorate a difficult second term as president and limit any possible gains for the far right in the forthcoming European elections in June.

Attal, 34, who was serving as education minister, has been referred to as a “baby Macron” as he shares similar qualities to the president, such as his ambition, strong media presence and centrist politics. He is considered to be the best-known and most recognisable face of the close circle of young politicians around the president.

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Meloni urged to ban neofascist groups after crowds filmed saluting in Rome

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Hundreds of men shown making fascist salutes during gathering outside Italian Social Movement headquarters

Italian opposition leaders have called on Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing government to ban neofascist groups after a chilling video emerged of hundreds of men making fascist salutes during an event in Rome.

The crowd was gathered outside the former headquarters of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neofascist party founded after the second world war which eventually morphed into Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party.

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German farmers block roads with tractors in subsidies protest

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Partial U-turn by Berlin fails to avert week-long nationwide action that government says could be co-opted by righwing extremists

German farmers blocked city centres, highways and motorway slip roads with tractors at the start of a week-long, nationwide protest over planned cuts to agricultural sector subsidies that the government said could be co-opted by rightwing extremists.

“We are exercising our basic right to inform society and the political class that Germany needs a competitive agricultural sector,” the president of the German farmers’ association, Joachim Rukwied, told Stern magazine on Monday.

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Book bans use ‘parental rights’ as cover to attack civil liberties, Democrat warns

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Florida congressman Maxwell Frost, who introduced Fight Banned Books Act, says bans are ‘baseless attack on our civil rights’

The growing number of book bans in the US are using a so-called parental rights movement as cover for a wide-ranging attack on civil rights in America, a Democratic congressman has warned.

Earlier this month, a new study by PEN America revealed that there had been at least 5,894 book bans in US public schools from July 2021 to June 2023, with more than 40% of them in Florida, birthplace of a rightwing parents group called Moms for Liberty.

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Javier Milei’s radical economic policies for Argentina met with protests

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New libertarian president accused of drawing up a ‘battle plan against working people’

Thousands of protesters have poured on to the streets of Buenos Aires after Argentina’s new president announced a far-reaching emergency decree containing dozens of controversial economic measures – a move one prominent critic compared to the actions of an absolute monarchy.

Javier Milei, a radical libertarian economist who was inaugurated less than a fortnight ago, won power promising a dramatic shake-up of Argentina’s moribund economy amid rampant inflation and widespread poverty. On Wednesday night Milei appeared on television, flanked by 12 stony-faced ministers and top officials, to unveil a decree he claimed would haul the South American country out of “the economic hell we are now living through”.

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Serbia’s elections held under ‘unjust conditions’, say international observers

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Aleksandar Vučić’s populist ruling party declared victory but concerns include ‘serious irregularities’ in polling places

Serbia’s elections took place under “unjust conditions”, international observers said on Monday, one day after Aleksandar Vučić’s populist ruling party declared victory.

The country held a snap parliamentary election, along with local elections, on Sunday. Preliminary results showed Vučić’s Serbian Progressive party (SNS) won about 46%, while the opposition coalition Serbia Against Violence took 23%.

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AfD ally wins mayoral election in east Germany

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Result in Pirna is party’s second mayoral win in east in six months and first time it has taken a lord mayor post

The far-right populist Alternative für Deutschland had another electoral success at the weekend when its candidate was elected as mayor of a town in east Germany, securing the party its second top municipal position in six months.

Tim Lochner, who is not a member of the AfD but ran with the party’s backing, in effect as its representative, secured 38.5% of the vote in the second round of a three-way runoff in the Saxon town of Pirna, near Dresden and close to the Czech border.

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Alex Jones offers $55m to Sandy Hook families to satisfy $1.5bn judgment

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Families of the slain schoolchildren had earlier proposed an $85m settlement for the Infowars host’s lies about the 2012 massacre

The conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has proposed to pay $55m over 10 years to the Sandy Hook families who sued him for spreading lies that the 2012 school massacre in Connecticut, one of the worst in American history, was a hoax.

The offer came after a Texas judge ruled that Jones, the host of Infowars, could not use bankruptcy protection to dodge the nearly $1.5bn he was ordered to pay to the victims’ families, who suffered abuse and threats from believers of Jones’s lies.

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Far-right Polish MP uses fire extinguisher to put out Hanukah candles

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Rabbi says antisemitic attack, hours after Donald Tusk vowed to reform Poland, galvanised support for Jewish community

A far-right Polish MP has extinguished candles on a menorah lit for Hanukah in Poland’s parliament, disrupting proceedings before a vote of confidence in the new government.

Grzegorz Braun, a fringe far-right MP, was shown on television spraying the menorah with a fire extinguisher. Haze filled the area. The parliament took a break in proceedings to deal with the incident and Braun was suspended for the rest of the day.

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German prosecutors charge 27 over alleged far-right plot

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Group linked to conspiracy theories accused of planning to storm Berlin parliament and topple government

German prosecutors have filed terrorism charges against 27 people, including a self-styled prince and a former far-right lawmaker, in connection with an alleged plot to topple the government that came to light with a slew of arrests a year ago.

An indictment against 10 suspects, including the most prominent figures, was filed on Monday at the state court in Frankfurt. Under the German legal system, the court must decide whether and when the case will go to trial.

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Javier Milei sworn in as president in ‘tipping point’ for Argentina

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Radical libertarian likens his election to fall of Berlin Wall in inauguration speech with strong echoes of Trump’s 2017 address

Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, has vowed to lead his country out of decades of “decadence and decline” but said its punishing economic crisis would intensify over the coming months, as a “who’s who” of the global far right assembled in Buenos Aires to celebrate the radical libertarian’s inauguration.

Addressing tens of thousands of supporters outside Argentina’s turquoise-domed neoclassical congress, Milei – a mercurial former TV celebrity known as El Loco or the Madman – compared his shock election with the start of the Soviet Union’s collapse.

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Middle-class fear of green policies fuels rise of far right, Colombia’s Petro warns

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Guerrilla leader turned president says, faced with having to reduce their carbon consumption, upper classes fear ‘the barbarians are coming’

Middle-class fears of losing a high standard of living because of green policies is driving the rise of the far right across the world, the president of Colombia has warned.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian at the Cop28 UN climate summit, Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftwing president, said the world had to find carbon-free ways of being prosperous, and that his country’s rich biodiversity would be the basis of its wealth after phasing out fossil fuels.

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Marine and Jean-Marie Le Pen to stand trial over alleged misuse of EU funds

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French far-right party denies irregularities in employment of parliamentary assistants

French far-right politician Marine Le Pen will stand trial alongside 27 others over alleged misuse of EU funds, the Paris prosecutor’s office said on Friday, charges that Le Pen’s party said it contested.

Twenty-eight defendants will be brought to court, including Le Pen and her father, Jean-Marie, the office said, confirming French media reports.

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‘It was heartbreaking’: Muslim mayor comes to terms with Dutch election result

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Ahmed Marcouch, directly targeted by Geert Wilders during his career, grapples with how best to heal country’s wounds

Soon after news broke that the populist Geert Wilders and his anti-Islam Party for Freedom (PVV) had won the most votes of any party in the Dutch elections, Ahmed Marcouch found himself comforting his distraught eight-year-old.

Earlier in the day, a teacher at his son’s school had explained the election results, discussing the wide differences between parties. Now Marcouch’s son was terrified that the family would have to leave the country.

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Georgia county to use program linked to election denier to flag ineligible voters

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Controversial EagleAI program connected to Trump supporter uses public records to flag people who shouldn’t be on the rolls

A Georgia county on Friday agreed to use a controversial program to identify ineligible people on its voter rolls that is connected to one of the most prominent election deniers and a key figure in Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Columbia county, which is just outside Augusta, is believed to be the first place in the US to use the program, which is called EagleAI, the New York Times reported. The software matches voting data with publicly available information like post office and death records to flag people who should no longer be on the rolls.

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Geert Wilders: effort to form Netherlands coalition not off to ‘dream start’

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Blow to far-right leader as man chosen to oversee coalition talks quits over fraud claims

The far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders has admitted that he was not off to a “dream start” in his attempts to form a government, after a man he appointed to oversee coalition talks quit over fraud allegations before getting started in the role.

Wilders and his Party for Freedom (PVV) look to have won almost a quarter of seats in the 150-seat Dutch parliament in last Wednesday’s elections, about 10 seats more than predicted.

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Success of Geert Wilders’ far-right PVV raises fears for Dutch climate policies

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The party has a hostile stance on attempts to cut carbon emissions but got more votes than any other in general election

The shocking success of Geert Wilders’ far-right PVV party in Dutch elections has left climate activists fearful of a drastic shift to fossil fuels and a rollback of climate policies if it manages to form a government.

Best known abroad for its rhetoric against Muslims, the PVV, which came first in Wednesday’s election but may struggle to find coalition partners, has taken a hard line on policies to stop the planet getting hotter.

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Tommy Robinson not welcome at march against antisemitism, say leaders

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Organisers of London protest against anti-Jewish hatred demand that far-right leader stays away, after he claimed to support it

Organisers of a march against antisemitism billed as Britain’s biggest since the second world war have demanded that the far-right leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon stay away.

Yaxley-Lennon, who uses the name Tommy Robinson, has claimed to support the aims of the march through central London due to be held this Sunday.

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‘It’s scary’: residents in Rotterdam reflect on Geert Wilders’ election win

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Wilders’ far-right party won the most seats in Dutch election, though many in this diverse city say they can understand why

In this tiny plaza, still plastered with posters urging voters to back the minority rights party Denk, the yawning divide between voters in Rotterdam’s diverse Feijenoord district was on full display.

On one side stood Nas Kosa, a Muslim who fears what might lie ahead after Geert Wilders’ far right, anti-Islam party surged to win more seats than any other party in Wednesday’s election.

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