The far-right tells a story people buy — so why don't progressives?

We are all tired of hearing the same tune: “the far-right is winning.” Yet, it keeps happening.

Far-right parties are topping polls across Europe’s biggest democracies while already sitting in cabinets and even leading governments in several EU countries and beyond.

And while their electoral gains are worrying enough, it’s their ideas that are spreading even faster by shaping trends on Instagram and TikTok, echoing through the misogynist corners of the podcast manosphere, and being supercharged by emotionally-driven algorithms.

It is a cultural wave shaped by a dangerous but simple story that resonates with those who feel left behind, offering a sense of order in the chaos, identity in the absence of belonging, and someone to blame when answers run out.

In the vacuum left by worn-out centrists and a fragmented left, that kind of simplicity is easy to understand and it becomes the only thing that feels concrete.

However, while that narrative pulls people in, progressive voices often struggle to speak with the same confidence or coherence.

Without a grounded vision, progressive politics risks becoming the politics of resistance alone — resisting Donald Trump, resisting Marine Le Pen, resisting Viktor Orbán, resisting Georgia Meloni — failing to build a parallel project that speaks to people’s needs, especially to working-class voters who don’t see these actors as existential threats but as responses to their own frustrations.

The instinct to sound the alarm is morally correct, and an essential part of the political debate, yet, when it becomes the default and only strategy, it rarely builds momentum or trust and only reinforces the sense that most politicians are defending a status quo that can’t deliver anymore.

Yelling 'fascist' doesn't work

You don’t defeat this threat by just yelling “fascist!” and calling it a strategy.

You defeat it by understanding how it works, why it thrives, and what makes people believe in it.

Authoritarians didn’t rise out of nowhere, they grew out of real economic insecurity and inequality, institutional decay and social fragmentation, all brewed by the failures of liberal catch-all parties.

When pro-democracy forces focus only on the symptoms (the strongman, the xenophobia) and ignore these root causes, they have already lost the plot.

Failing to grasp these dynamics also leads to a distorted sense of electability and a retreat into whatever feels familiar.

This is why, even as the far-right gains ground with bold and simple stories, much of the political establishment still treats moderation as the only path to victory. Too often, liberal elites and cautious centrists confuse electoral management with real leadership.

Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani

I was reminded of this recently at a Democracy Drinks event in Brussels, where I asked Anthony L. Gardner, former US ambassador to the EU, for his take on the momentum behind Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who continue to draw huge crowds with their Fighting Oligarchy Tour during Trump’s second term.

He dismissed it, saying the Democrats’ best shot was still a moderate candidate, a white, cisgender man.

That moment revealed how deeply the logic of caution still runs, the belief that the safest path forward is the one voters have already walked, even if it leads nowhere, and that clinging to the past is not just naive but an admission that you have nothing new to offer.

Don’t get me wrong, most people aren’t asking for a revolution.

They’re asking for stability, and that won’t come from caution when the foundations are already crumbling. People want to know their rent will be paid, their job won’t disappear, their children won’t grow up worse off than they did.

A survey of 33,000 people across 28 countries found severe levels of distrust in government and business, with a majority seeing them as serving the narrow interests of the wealthy while ordinary people struggle.

What they’re desperate for is political clarity rooted in material reality, and a radical politics willing to confront the inequality built into the system.

New York City mayor candidate, Zohran Mamdani, for example, understands this well.

He built a campaign around rent-freeze policies, fare-free public transit, basic goods access and the rising cost of living as part of a coherent political narrative grounded in everyday struggles.

The delivery matched the message: sharp language, a clear visual identity, and a digital strategy that met people where they are.

German Left MP, Heidi Reichinnek, channels a similar clarity. She is unafraid to challenge economic orthodoxy, confronts far-right narratives head-on, and speaks directly to class struggle with language that refuses to apologise for being systemic in its ambition.

And, yes, design, branding, and a sense of how to ride a TikTok trend all matter — and if you’re not already applying these tools, you need to rethink your communication team’s role or take a step back and study Political Campaigns 101 — but these tools only resonate when they serve the policy and are grounded in something real.

This is the kind of narrative and politics that doesn’t just manage decline but aims to transform the conditions that feed the far right’s rise.

And that’s the real lesson: there is no going back to how things were. The current social contract and the old consensus are broken, clinging to it is not strategy, it’s surrender. 

Progressives should not be here to restore what failed, but to replace it. This does not mean mirroring the far-right’s populism, it means reclaiming the tools they’ve used so effectively — clarity, boldness, narrative power — but without the hate, the lies, or the authoritarian fantasies.

A politics that speaks to people’s fears without exploiting them, that nurtures hopes without inflating them, and that transforms rhetoric into a vehicle for trust and mobilisation rather than manipulation.

To defeat a politics of fear, we need a politics of meaning.

This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.