Fifty shades of brown: how splits in Europe’s hard right sap its power

Is it possibleRNNGOEU to build an entire political philosophy out of hating George Soros? Nothing delights the European hard right more than demonising the financier, who has spent billions in recent decades bankrolling lefty-liberal causes. Viktor Orban, prime minister of Mr Soros’s native Hungary, has plastered his nemesis on billboards as a symbol of dastardly “globalism”. Giorgia Meloni, his counterpart in Italy, once denounced Mr Soros as a “usurer” trying to sway her country’s politics (the antisemitism was presumably unintentional). Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally () in France, has questioned whether s funded by Mr Soros secretly hold sway over European courts. On the less moderated bits of the internet, where antisemitism is often entirely intentional, the populists’ supporters share theories about their bogeyman’s role in orchestrating the covid-19 pandemic, alongside the World Economic Forum and others in the global elite.The Soros-bashers have the political wind in their sails. At European elections on June 6th-9th, the various parties of the hard right are on track to win a quarter of all seats, up from a fifth now. For the first time, polls show they may jointly have more members of the European Parliament than any other single political grouping, narrowly edging out the centre-right. Given that the leadership of the European Commission, the ’s powerful executive arm, is meant to go to the leader of the biggest party, that might have been a political earthquake. Instead the elections will result in the mildest of tremors. For one thing, the broad alliance of centrist groups that have traditionally run the show will still enjoy a majority, albeit a narrower one than before. For national-conservative types to mount a challenge to that status quo would require them to form a coherent and united alliance. Yet as much as the hard right detest Mr Soros, they manage to loathe each other nearly as much. Not since Napoleon fielded his army has Europe seen so many divisions at work.