Italy saw the leftist Democratic Party emerge as the number one political force in the country with 40 percent of the vote, while Beppo Grillo's angry and iconoclastic, but program-light, Five Star Movement took a beating, coming in at 21.2 percent. Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's rightwing Forza Italia took third at 16.8 percent. A Syriza look alike, "L'Aitra Europa" (the "Other Europe"), garnered a respectable 4 percent and three seats in the European Parliament after only a few months campaigning. In contrast, the much older and established racist Northern League lost four seats and took an anemic 6.2 percent of the vote.
In Slovenia the United Left won 5.9 percent of the vote, which in a general election would have given the party six seats in parliament.
The extreme right Party for Freedom in the Netherlands lost two seats, and the rightwing Finns Party dropped from the 19 percent it scored in 2011 to 13 percent.
Not that it was all sweetness and light.
Hungary's neo-Nazi Jobbik took 14.7 percent of the vote, but that was an almost 6 percent drop from what the Party received in last month's general elections. Poland's reactionary Congress of the New Right jumped from 1 percent in the 2011 general elections to 7 percent, and Lithuania's conservative Order and Justice Party scored 14.3%. The anti-immigrant New Flemish Alliance won in Belgium, and Austria's Freedom Party came in third, with 19.7 percent of the vote. However, right wing parties like Ataka in Bulgaria, the Greater Romanian Party, and the Slovak National Party all lost voters.
The right won parliamentary seats in 10 out of the 28 EU countries, and increased their representation in six of those countries, but also lost seats in seven other countries.
The triumphs of the NF in France and the UKID are certainly worrisome. Both ran virulent, anti-immigrant campaigns, and the NF has long been associated with anti-Semitism and anti-Roma ideology. It would be a mistake, however, to assume everyone who voted for both parties share their penchant for ethnic hatred. Some of that support was indeed racist, but the parties also tapped into voter anger over the economic policies of the EU that have kept both countries locked into near recession conditions.
The "traditional" left -- the Socialist Party in France and the Labour Party in the UK -- have gone along with some of the troika's austerity measures, and have also been sotto voce about immigrant bashing. The absence of a serious left critique of EU policies in both countries let many people surrender to their dark side and buy the fable that immigrants have swamped the job market and plundered social services. Especially since many of the rightist parties opportunistically adopted anti-austerity planks.
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