From the autumn 2020 edition of New Humanist
The crowd went wild as Matteo Salvini strode onto the stage of the Gran Guardia, a stunning Renaissance palace in the heart of medieval Verona. The leader of Italy’s far-right League party took his place at the rostrum in front of rows of delegates from the World Congress of Families. This was the 13th meeting of the organisation: a once obscure religious movement that has become a hugely influential network supporting the radical right around the world.
Salvini did not disappoint. With the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up, the League’s leader railed against Islamic extremism, population decline and Europe’s crisis of “empty cribs”. Cheers rang out when Salvini pulled on a dark blue and white T-shirt with silhouettes of a man, a woman and two small children. “You are the vanguard… that keeps the flame alive for what 99.9 per cent of people want.”
The Verona meeting, in late March 2019, was arguably the most prominent since the Congress was established by American and Russian ultra-conservatives in the late 1990s. At the time of his address, Salvini was Italy’s deputy Prime Minister. Also in attendance were American anti-abortionists and Australian supporters of gay conversion therapy, Russian Orthodox priests and delegates from Brazilian prime minister Jair Bolsonaro’s misnamed Social Liberal Party.
Like many far-right leaders gaining ground around the world, Salvini has used the language of religion for political expediency, setting himself up as “the last of the good Christians” in opposition to the relatively liberal Pope Francis. In Verona, the city of Romeo and Juliet, the League’s figurehead played the penitent sinner, talking up his personal failings while also presenting himself as the strongman who could save Italy from homosexuals, feminists, immigrants and Muslims. The pitch was crude, xenophobic and very successful. By the time the World Congress of Families arrived in Verona, the League was ahead in the polls.
The World Congress of Families has been described as an “anti-LGBT hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremist movements in the US. In Verona, speakers claimed that the “natural family” was under such systematic assault that the west was on the precipice of a “demographic winter” because not enough babies will be born. At an informal press conference on the Gran Guardia’s steps, an Italian neo-fascist party announced the launch of a campaign for a referendum to overturn the country’s abortion law.
The Congress’s particular brand of social conservatism is part of the new political discourse that is fast becoming normal in countries across Europe. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán has vowed to defend “Christian Europe” from Muslim migration. Poland’s Law and Justice party have put in place restrictive limits on women’s access to contraception and demonised LBGT people. (The party’s hold on power was cemented in July, when incumbent president Andrzej Duda narrowly won an election.) This has enthusiastic support from Poland’s Catholic establishment, which warns of a “rainbow plague” that has replaced the “red plague” which blighted the country in the communist era.
In America, more than 80 per cent of evangelical Christians voted for the thrice-married Donald Trump in 2016. Many are expected to do so again in November’s presidential election.
Various explanations have been offered to account for this rising tide of reaction: economic uncertainty; cultural anxiety; changes in societal attitudes to religion and sexuality; the failures of market liberalism, especially in eastern Europe; austerity measures introduced after the financial crisis; the migration crisis on Europe’s borders.
What is often missed, however, is the role that global flows of political money and influence have played in bringing once diffuse nativist movements together for set-piece occasions such as the World Congress of Families in Verona. From Trump to Salvini, many of these putative populists benefit from international networks of funding and support that cross the very national borders that they have pledged themselves to defend.
* * *
The World Congress of Families is the closest Europe’s radical right has to Davos. Dozens of far-right politicians have attended over the last decade, as have cardinals, bishops and a ragtag crew of minor continental royalty. Crucially, it has also attracted influential figures from America’s powerful religious conservative movements, who are not only ideological supporters but also helping to bankroll the network.
The Congress’s head, Brian Brown, is a father of nine who was raised Quaker but converted to Catholicism as an adult and made his name fighting against marriage equality in his native California. Brown chose Verona for the 2019 Congress after the League-led local government defied Italy’s abortion laws to declare itself a “pro-life city” and gave public funding to anti-abortion groups. He told delegates that the Congress theme was “the Winds of Change” because of countries like Italy and Hungary “standing up for the family”.
In early 2019, an investigation by openDemocracy – the news site where I work – found that a dozen groups on the US religious right had spent at least $50 million in Europe, on various causes, over the previous decade. The true figure is likely to be much higher, but the payments offer a glimpse into how these funds have contributed to the nativist political shift across the Atlantic.
US conservative money has had a very tangible impact on Europe’s streets. If you are a woman in Italy who unexpectedly becomes pregnant, you might find yourself in one of numerous free counselling services that have popped up across the country run by an Italian charity called Movimento Per la Vita (Movement for Life), modelled on “crisis pregnancy centres” in the US. In the clinics, Italian women are shown graphic anti-abortion videos and promised financial help if they do not have a termination. These Italian clinics are supported and partly funded from thousands of miles away in Columbus, Ohio, by an organisation called Heartbeat International.
Another high-spending US Christian funder in Europe, the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, was involved through its Italian branch in Steve Bannon’s ill-fated plans to turn an ancient abbey into what he called a “gladiator school” for the “next generation of nationalist and populist leaders”. From an 800-year-old hilltop monastery in Trisulti, nearly two hours outside Rome, Bannon hoped to propagate populism across Europe.
The academy never got off the ground. Acton’s founder publicly distanced himself from Bannon, saying that the Rome office had acted without his knowledge in supporting the project. But much of the coverage of the controversy surrounding the scheme missed a significant point about Acton’s work. The thinktank has an explicit mission to fuse support for free-market capitalism with social conservatism. Its funders have included a foundation belonging to the Koch brothers, the oil magnates who have spent billions pushing libertarian causes and climate change denial in the US. The unholy alliance of fundamentalist Christianity and pro-corporate lobbying has been part of American political life for decades.
Populists were widely expected to make historic gains in the European elections in May 2019. They did win a record number of seats in the European parliament. However, as a bloc, they fell short of their most optimistic predictions – not least because many traditional right and centrist parties adopted similarly hardline stances on immigration in order to draw the sting of their proto-fascist rivals. But in Italy, the openly racist League topped the poll, for the first time in its history. Salvini celebrated by holding up a
rosary and kissing a small crucifix.
Brian Brown claimed partial credit for what he called the League’s “huge victory”. The World Congress of Families was on the rise.
* * *
Among the most effective speakers at the Congress in Verona was a telegenic Spaniard with salt-and-pepper stubble named Ignacio Arsuaga. A World Congress of Families veteran, Arsuaga knew how to work the ultra-conservative room for applause. In slow, deliberate tones he told delegates that they were fighting a global “culture war” against “cultural Marxists”, “radical feminists” and “LGBT totalitarians”. The only way to win was by taking power directly through “parties and elected officials” – and, indirectly, by shifting public opinion.
In January 2013, Arsuaga had joined a London retreat with roughly 20 pro-life leaders from Europe and the US. The network – Agenda Europe – proposed that lobbyists petition governments to repeal all legislation allowing for divorce, civil partnerships or same-sex adoption, according to a private document called “Restoring the Natural Order”. By 2018, Agenda Europe had grown to over 100 organisations in more than 30 countries, meeting in secret to implement “a detailed strategy to roll back human rights”.
Arsuaga founded one of the most influential groups in this network: CitizenGo, the European religious right’s answer to progressive online campaign platforms like Avaaz and Change.org. CitizenGo has promoted online petitions demanding that Disneyland Paris cancel a gay pride parade and calling for a boycott of Netflix after the streaming service announced that it was supporting opponents of a draconian anti-abortion bill in the US state of Georgia.
It is most active in Spain, however, where it is known as HazteOir (“Make yourself heard”). In 2019, the Spanish government ruled that the group “denigrated and devalued” gay people. Athough nominally non-party political, it is particularly close to Spain’s far-right party, Vox. Since the fall of the dictatorship in the mid-1970s, Spain had been one of the few European states without a serious ultra-conservative political force. That changed in 2014 when a small group of radicals broke away from the conservative Partido Popular – which had long contained people nostalgic for the Franco regime – to form Vox.
The new party rose quickly. It captured headlines, promising to deport extremist imams and crush the “criminal” separatist government in Catalonia that was pushing for independence. Vox would take back Gibraltar and reassert Spain’s Catholic identity. Hacer España grande otra vez: Make Spain great again.
Spain, like most European countries, has strict political finance laws that cap spending and usually require donor transparency. One way to circumvent funding limits is through third-party campaign groups.
In Verona, a senior Vox official told an undercover journalist that he could support the party by giving money “indirectly” to CitizenGo. The Vox staff member compared CitizenGo to a “Super Pac”, the election vehicles that can spend limitless amounts of money in American elections without having to reveal their donors.
* * *
There have been other signs of such “dark money” on Europe’s far right. Germany’s AfD party has been embroiled in a number of funding scandals, including receiving anonymous donations routed through Swiss companies and €150,000 from an unknown Dutch political organisation called the European Identity Foundation. Senior representatives of the League were secretly recorded negotiating a deal to covertly siphon millions of pounds of Russian money to the Italian party through an oil company. Salvini said that the discussions – which were taped in Moscow’s Metropole Hotel – were “fake news”.
Vox’s rise was not solely fuelled by shady campaign finance. The party built a huge online following, consciously bypassing traditional media to appeal directly to voters. Ultra-nationalist videos told frightening stories about immigration. Others provided a hopeful vision of the future: Vox’s leader Santiago Abascal on horseback or standing in the rain looking out over fields and vineyards. This dual digital strategy has been very successful, especially with young people. Vox has more followers on Instagram than the Socialists and the far-left Podemos combined.
Vox’s huge social media reach does not seem to be entirely organic. Many of the most prolific pro-Vox accounts displayed behaviour that digital researchers would call unusual, according to research published in early 2019. Over the course of a year, some 3,000 Twitter accounts sent 4.5 million pro-Vox and anti-Islamic tweets. They often published identical posts that were designed to look spontaneous but were in fact coordinated disinformation.
Vox supporters were particularly likely to share conspiracy theories. There were stories about “white genocide” and myriad mentions of Jewish billionaire George Soros, who had barely featured in Spanish politics before Vox. Hyper-partisan political news sites in Italy and Brazil performed a similar function ahead of elections in 2018. In both countries, these far-right portals amplified narratives – about immigration in Italy, corruption in Brazil – before they had become part of the mainstream discourse.
Many of Vox’s digital echo chambers pushed religiously tinged disinformation. Leftists were encouraging children to have abortions. Muslims wanted to take Spain back to the time of the Moors. Religion, as digital expert Claire Wardle explained to me, “is one of the best ways to spread disinformation online.” Similar tactics were used during the 2016 presidential election, when Russian-backed accounts appealed directly to Christian fundamentalists by sharing images that showed Hillary Clinton, devil horns protruding, arm-wrestling with Jesus.
Vox’s strident, confrontational messaging has brought electoral success. In a second Spanish general election in November 2019, Vox put the “menace” of migrant children at the centre of an aggressively racist campaign. Amid widespread disillusionment at the country’s gridlocked politics, the far-right party’s support surged. Vox finished third, more than doubling its seats in parliament.
* * *
The depiction of figures like Salvini and Abascal as grassroots insurgents storming the citadel with little more than an internet connection and a nativist dream is compelling. Certainly, this new generation of nationalists has tapped into a deep well of popular anger and frustration with the status quo.
Their advance, however, is also undergirded by networks of dark money and hidden influence. Armies of digital supporters spread disinformation across the borderless internet. Electoral rules, where they exist, are there to be broken.
This new generation of autocrats frequently draws on the same tactics: weaponising religion, mobilising fear of the “other” and presenting themselves as the only authentic voice of “the people”. It is an approach that chimes with the increasingly powerful ultra-conservative movement.
“The political vision nurtured by the World Congress of Families has become frighteningly mainstream,” says my openDemocracy colleague Claire Provost, an investigative journalist who has spent years tracking the backlash against rights for women, LGBTQI people and minorities. “The longer I spend with these groups, the less I think they’re actually fixated on specific issues like abortion. While they talk a lot about women’s wombs, theirs is a much wider political project, to support authoritarian societies led by ‘strongmen’.”
Peter Geoghegan’s book “Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics” is published by Head of Zeus.
