The Brown International: A Transnational Far-Right Movement Filling a Void
When a French court found Marine Le Pen guilty of misusing European Union funds and barred her from running for office for five years, the most revealing thing was not the verdict. It was the reaction. Within hours, a chorus rose across half a dozen countries, all singing the same note. Viktor Orbán posted the old Solidarity slogan, refitted for the occasion: “I am Marine.” Matteo Salvini sneered that those who fear the voters’ verdict reach for the courts instead, and told her to march forward. Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy echoed the sentiment. Geert Wilders chimed in from the Netherlands, Santiago Abascal from Spain, Nigel Farage from Britain, George Simion from Romania. From across the Atlantic came Elon Musk, blaming the radical left for jailing its opponents when it cannot beat them at the ballot box, and Jair Bolsonaro, who diagnosed “leftist judicial activism.” A single court ruling in Paris had set off a continent-wide reflex of mutual defense. That reflex has a name worth using plainly: the Brown International. ...