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

Is it possible 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 (RN) in France, has questioned whether NGOs 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.