Politics is all about power.

Now in Europe, the right wing–right wing ideas have that power.
To conjecture about the impacts of such power ruling the EU, one must first understand the reasons for the rise of right-wing leadership.

It's fear.

The current social climate–the pandemic, economic recession, the ongoing war, and the potential threat of more severe depressions–has encouraged the public to seek drastic change. In other words, Europe’s citizens want to make Europe great again. Such a scenario has already taken place in history several times: the fall of the Weimar Republic that led to the rise of Hitler, and more recently, Trump building walls between borders.

One major characteristic of right-wing extremism is that it establishes a majority vs. minority dynamic and blames social minorities for the challenges we face today. In an essay on Trump and populist politics, political theorist Jan-Werner Müller points out that "Trump's politics are about exclusion." Namely, Trump announced in a rally that "The only important thing is the unification of the people–because the other people don't mean anything." Müller observes that "…the logic is always the same: There is a real America, as identified by Trump, and whoever does not agree cannot be a real American (and is also implicitly opposed to 'making America great again')." A similar mindset is shown in a speech by Giorgia Meloni 2019, the newly elected prime minister of Italy. During the speech, she emphasizes her identity as an Italian, Christian, and mother; in other words, the righteousness of being a majority. She appeals to the sympathy of citizens by bringing attention to her characteristics which the majority will find familiar. In the meantime, she suggests that such characteristics are typical and the right way to live.

Governments led by such doctrines may be successful. The German economy grew during World War II under Hitler's rule. A totalitarian nation led by a dictator can enforce harsh measures, sometimes even ignoring human rights and inviolable values, an infamous example being the deportation of Koreans from the Soviet Union in the Stalin Era. With that, neo-liberalist policies, the economic model of the right-wing--including but not limited to strengthening business, lowering taxes, and deregulation–in general, might drive productivity in the short term due to benefits such as "freer markets, access to more products and services to meet consumer demand, higher revenue, and higher profits." Worshiping the free market, the invisible hand (a metaphor for the unseen forces that move the free market economy), might revitalize the economy.

However, the critical flaw of such policies is that they cannot protect people with less power. Take deregulation as an example. It might lead to successful corporations, but it may result in worker disenfranchisement if it undermines policies such as the minimum wage. Note how one of the reasons why the unemployment rate drastically declined under Nazi Germany was because Hitler merely eliminated certain people from the statistics. The invisible hand is invisible but also blind. As a result, it doesn't recognize that we are, first and foremost, human beings with inalienable rights, not simply economic actors.

What is politics’ role? According to the social contract, a political organization is organized on behalf of individual well-being. For the well-being of each person, we must first establish a community wherein the spirit of democracy and the meaning of citizenship is secured. All of us, including immigrants, and others regarded as the minority of the modern world, are 'sleeping sovereign.' We give power to our representatives for the betterment of society. The rise of extreme right leadership undermines its citizens' values and threatens such sovereignty. We must remember that each of us is a member of democracy who signed the social contract.