What Does the Rise of the Photo Retouching

When Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPO) Norbert Hofer lost the presidency by a narrow margin in December 2016, public opinion was rejoicing that the populist wave in Europe had finally been stopped. Coming to this year's French presidential election, people who are worried about the encroachment of the far-right on the political map no longer have the fluke feelings of a few years ago. Despite losing the election, Marine Le Pen regarded the result as a "huge victory". Indeed, compared with the shock caused by the National Front's predecessor, the National Front, which squeezed into the second round of the general election for the first time in 2002, Le Pen won the highest number of votes in the history of the National League.

Compared with the votes, there is a considerable growth. The main reason why public opinion no longer takes a fluke attitude is that people finally realize that perhaps in the not too distant future, the far right will seize the first position in Europe to govern alone. Far Right: Far Right? Shape left and right? The term "far right" is often misunderstood by its literal photo retouching meaning. In fact, in many European countries, far-right forces are no longer marginal parties, and they all have votes that can shake the system. While populist and anti-elite tunes make them seem anti-establishment parties, unlike the fascist parties of the interwar period, current far-right parties in Europe rarely openly question representative democracies, even if the populist style makes them sometimes think It is necessary to bypass the parliamentary process and directly appeal to the people to promote policies.

The populist style is the main reason why these far-right parties are seen as the enemy of the democratic system. Jan-Werner Müller, a professor of political science at Princeton University and author of "Understanding Populism," warns that populism tends to interpret political competition in a moralistic way by creating the illusion of a pure and consistent "people". A zero-sum confrontation for the "silent majority" against the corrupt elites in the system. In the long run, it will seriously damage the legitimacy of democratic institutions as the rules of the game.