At the 2024 European elections, right-wing parties celebrated a 27 per cent increase in parliamentary seats, including for members of coalitions including the European People’s Party, Identity and Democracy Party, and European Conservatives and Reformists. Leftists, from Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, European Green Party, European Free Alliance and The Left, suffered a 9.57 per cent drop in support.
The days preceding the elections were marked by strong campaigning from right-wing parties in many European countries. Fielding candidates with extremist views, Germany’s AfD party gained four Parliamentary seats, while Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy secured fifteen. Huge support for the right was also recorded in Spain, Poland, and the Czech Republic. The rise of conservative ideologies in Europe is not as widely reported, ‘sudden’. It has on the contrary been methodically gradual.
Old rhetoric, new tactics
In Slovenia, 41.06 per cent of eligible voters firmly established the left as a minority by securing four Parliamentary seats for the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), which won all electoral units. Focussed on strict migration policies as well as encouraging ‘traditional’ values and national pride, SDS relied on the persuasive and emotionally charged language in its manifesto and representatives’ speeches.
Its rhetoric targeted voters’ ingrained and encouraged fear of migrants by employing phrases like ‘mass illegal migration’ and encouraging support for the party under the guise of national security. Despite Slovenia existing as a secular state and the EU upholding principles of secularism, the manifesto also announced: ‘We must protect our European way of life by preserving our Christian values and fundamental principles’.
In such framings, Islamophobia and racism are portrayed as mere conservative preference. As a result, xenophobia is rarely raised as an issue in Slovenia’s migration debates. The scale of migration is exaggerated while the mistreatment of Muslims and other ethnic groups is overlooked or downplayed. Such discrimination was wide-spread in Yugoslavia, before Slovenia’s independence in 1991 began to fuel negative sentiment towards non-Balkan migrants – a fact noted by Nina Antolovič, attaché at the Slovenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in 2003.
The Slovenian Democratic Party manifesto announced: ‘We must protect our European way of life by preserving our Christian values and fundamental principles’
Branko Grims – climate change denier, close acquaintance of far-right nationalist groups and one of the two new SDS representatives elected to EU Parliament – openly shares that negativity. In the pre-election period, Grims attended rallies protesting asylum homes being built and gave out promotional merchandise that carried his slogan: ‘Every illegal migrant has three basic rights: to be arrested, to undergo due process, to be deported!’ Grims also pandered to voters’ religious devotion, claiming in his campaign bio that ‘mass migrations lead to the destruction of Christian roots of Europe’. He has argued that migration has caused a ‘genocide against white people’ and called for the defence of ‘indigenous’ European traditions and cultures.
Despite a worryingly effective hands-on campaign, Grims was overshadowed during this year’s elections by Zala Tomašič – nicknamed ‘SDS offspring’ – whose focus on youth made her instrumental in the party’s success. The youngest representative elected to EU Parliament in Slovenian history, Tomašič advocates for traditional gender roles and strict immigration policies, commonly addressing younger voters on TikTok. Following her June appearance on national television, journalist Milena Miklavčič likened Tomašič’s performance to that of Italy’s Meloni, whose fascist motto ‘God, family, fatherland’ Slovenia’s 28-year-old politician proudly adopts.
Complicity in silence
Despite the SDS threatening the left’s electoral prospects, during campaigning, voter attention remained more focussed on rallies and on controversies surrounding the elections than on the parties themselves. In the run-up to the elections, supporters of liberal parties congregated at protests that called for ceasefire in Gaza and green transition, often joined by left party representatives. On the opposite side of the spectrum, far-right rallies decried the then-liberal government and opposed building new homes for people seeking asylum.
Increasing far-right mobilisation snowballed into the self-titled Slovenian Defence Guard (SOS), consisting of 220 members as of June, some as young as eleven, that openly aimed to ‘cleanse the country of migrants’. SOS began imposing their extreme violence only weeks before election day, tying alleged migrants to lampposts and hanging nooses around their necks. Their actions fed public fears over ‘national security’ and ‘cultural preservation’. SOS also spread false accusations of migrants committing sexual assault in an attempt to justify the physical attacks – and further spreading xenophobic tropes.
Hoping to sway more voters right, SOS organised a rally in the country’s capital in early June, calling for ‘re-migration’ (deportations) and promoting Identitarianism – an ethno-nationalist stance SDS members also support. Public rallies are allowed by Slovenian law, but this one was not registered in accordance with the Law on Public Gatherings. It featured Nazi salutes, SS-Totenkopf and swastika symbols, and variations of the Celtic cross. SOS members also expressed admiration for Hitler in their Telegram group chat.
Slovenian Defence Guard members, some as young as eleven, openly aimed to ‘cleanse the country of migrants’
While some left-party representatives critiqued the rally – highlighting its ‘threat to Europe and democracy’ – minister Boštjan Poklukar of the centre-left Freedom Movement commented that SOS were acting within their rights, noting that such actions, however fascist, cannot be prosecuted under the Criminal Code. Whether due to plain reluctance or fear of losing votes, those who remained silent – or even subtly endorsed such actions – have played a significant role in the triumph of the right.
As the number of undocumented migrants has risen in Slovenia, the right has exploited and channelled public fears over housing, healthcare and job shortages into prejudice, xenophobia, and racism. Left parties, despite advocating for a reform of migration politics in their 2024 EU election programmes, have not been proactive in response. All failed to condemn nationalist rallies, only addressing fascist incidents when questioned directly about them on live television.
SOS’s extremism ultimately forced leading conservative news outlet Nova24TV (owned by leader of SDS and former Prime Minister of Slovenia Janez Janša) to criticise the group – though the station also published suggestions that leftists had in fact orchestrated the rally to discredit SDS and gain parliamentary seats. SOS members themselves denied that claim in their Telegram chat, and publicly celebrated election results by congratulating ‘the biggest anti-immigrant politician in the country, Branko Grims, MA, on winning the mandate’.
Across Europe, neo-Nazism will thrive as long as other political parties legitimise the far-right’s fear-mongering by echoing its rhetoric and ideology, rather than confronting it systematically and assertively. In Slovenia, it appears that the left looked on as the country voted fascism into the EU Parliament.
