The rise of far-right parties in Germany and Italy

Abstract

The emergence of Far Right movements in the interwar period, which was triggered by the great economic depression of 1929, indirectly influenced the emergence of devastating events such as World War II, leaving a global impact. Following these events, Western European powers sought to prevent the continent from any future conflict, creating the European Coal and Steal Community (ECSC), while adopting constitutional measures to restrict Far Right parties from rising to power ever again. However, recently, Far Right parties have been gaining public support, especially in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and even more so following the 2015 migration crisis, which exposed the European continent to over 1.2 million asylum seekers, bringing to fundamental cracks within the EU. The aim of this dissertation is to determine the main factors contributing to the shift in the public’s opinion towards the Far Right, with particular focus on the former Axis European powers of Germany and Italy. This dissertation will evaluate various views of political scientists about key ideologies which characterise the Far Right political ideology, while factoring in the rise of right-wing populism. In recent national and European Parliament elections, the German ‘Alternative für Deutschland’ and the Italian ‘La Lega’, have obtained remarkable results, which will be delved into thoroughly. These two parties managed to obtain seats both within the national parliament and the European parliament, simultaneously becoming the third largest political force in their respective countries. The insight attained through the literature review, and the research tools discussed in the methodology, will provide reliable basis upon which to conduct the analysis. Collectively, these chapters will establish the relation between the two aforementioned global crises with the AfD and La Lega’s political stances, and the social and economic situation of Germany and Italy in relation to the electoral shift towards the Far Right.