Spain's Vox to gather European far-right figures in Madrid for a conference

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00:00 Now the conference this weekend will bring together far-right figures from across Europe

00:04 to try and rally the Vox party's base ahead of European elections in June and to talk

00:11 more about it we're joined by Aaron Winter, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Lancaster

00:16 University.

00:17 Thanks for talking to France 24.

00:19 Thank you for having me.

00:20 So what's then the significance of this event would you say ahead of the European elections?

00:27 I think it's partly about boosting Vox but also establishing a broader coalition of far-right

00:35 parties that have already consolidated power in respective countries but want to gain more

00:44 within the European context in European elections.

00:48 I think it's one in which we see right-wing parties more broadly forming coalitions and

00:56 moving further to the right.

00:58 So just to list a few of the expected participants Marine Le Pen from France, Hungary's Viktor

01:03 Orbán, Italy's Giorgio Meloni.

01:05 It's almost a kind of Eurosceptic prom something like that isn't it?

01:11 Yes absolutely.

01:13 I think Meloni has said previously in the context of Vox's election defeat that the

01:21 hour of the patriot has arrived.

01:24 This seems a lot more than just mere Euroscepticism.

01:29 This is a call I think for a far-right insurgency or takeover of mainstream politics.

01:40 One in which the far-right is increasingly mainstreamed and having a huge influence already

01:46 on even mainstream conservative and centrist politics across Europe and in the UK.

01:52 How do you see these parties performing then in the upcoming elections if you were to put

01:56 a rough kind of idea of how they'll do?

02:01 My worry has been that they will gain more.

02:06 But I think one of the problems we've had historically is the debate about whether their

02:12 success, their actual electoral success is the biggest threat.

02:17 And I think we have this idea of how they will penetrate the mainstream.

02:22 But it's really important to note over the past number of elections and I guess the past

02:27 decade that far-right, the influence and success and impact of far-right parties is not just

02:34 electoral success, whether in the EU elections or nationally, but the way in which they can

02:39 set the agenda and the way in which the media can amplify not only their threat, but the

02:47 way to mitigate that threat is to buy into or moderate and mainstream their ideas such

02:54 that we have, even if they're not successful, even if individual parties are not successful

02:59 or candidates, that the ideas, particularly anti-immigration ideas and sort of nationalist

03:07 and even sort of like across Europe, civilizational politics, are themselves taken aboard by mainstream

03:17 central centre parties and mainstream conservative parties in ways that seek to get their supporters

03:25 and stop the, I guess what is seen as a more severe impact of far-right extremism and racism,

03:33 but nonetheless replicates their ideas and does great damage to the social fabric and

03:39 to those on the sharpest end of those politics, largely Muslims and immigrants.

03:44 What about Javier Mele? Then what is he trying to achieve with this visit other than to sell

03:50 his book and maybe tick off Petro Sanchez?

03:56 Well I think that is what selling the book is a good point, but I think what we've seen

04:01 over the past decade and a bit is a wider, even though we talk about Euroscepticism,

04:07 we're talking about a wider global block of reactionary right-wing far-right parties that

04:17 want to consolidate power globally. And I think that is one in which is firmly established

04:26 as a sort of political concern in the global north, but is wider. And I think that cheerleading

04:34 across the world and making these links is not new for the extreme right or the far right,

04:42 but is becoming increasingly dangerous as individuals and individual parties are elected

04:52 globally in different countries and supporting each other in the wake of successes and bolstering

04:58 in the context of losses.

05:01 I think if you look at someone like Malay's libertarianism, he looks actually quite different

05:07 a figure to some of these European ones. So what would you say is the common thread really

05:12 binding these figures together?

05:15 I think it's a sort of a wider reactionary politics. It's an anti-leftism and I think

05:24 that's where obviously libertarianism also fits in. But I also think it's an idea of

05:31 creating coalitions of shared interests and ideological overlap that can create a block

05:38 and create new geopolitical formations.

05:43 All right. Aaron Winter, we have to leave it there. But thank you very much for speaking

05:46 to France 24.

05:47 Thank you very much.

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