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TL;DR : Don't panic.

• In Poland the far-right Prime Minster Mateusz Morawiecki from the Law and Justice party was defeated in the November 2023 elections and Donald Tusk was elected on 11th of December 2023, his coalition government was sworn in on 13th of December.

• In April 2024 the far-right Geert Wilders in the Netherlands failed to form a coalition government and stepped down as candidate for Prime Minister.

• In April 2024, in Turkey the AKP party of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan lost dramatically in the municipal elections; the Social Democratic Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi won in a landslide in all major cities.

• In Italy, the neo-fascist Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has been very reluctant to establish far-right policies.

• In May 2024 large protests took to the streets in Hungary against Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his cabinet.

• In June 2024, prior to the European elections, Marine Le Pen of the French extreme rigth Rassemblement National refused to meet Alice Weidel, co-chair of the German fascist party AfD about its plans to "deport" migrants and refugees.

• Also this June, the elections to the European parliament had high voter turnout for far-right parties in various member states. But missed in the national outbursts of angst over that was that in the EU parliament 1) the German extreme right party AfD was expelled from the extreme-right parliament bloc/faction ID, 2) that even with the gains of some such parties in some member states of the EU, the parliamentary bloc of the extreme right (ECP and ID) in fact lost five seats (2024: 130 seats, 2019: 135 seats), whereas the bloc of centrist parties (Conservatives [European meaning], Liberals [European meaning], Social Democrats) still kept their vast majority (2024: 407 seats, 2019: 444 seats), while Greens and left-leaning parties gained more seats.

• On 4th of July, Labour in the UK defeated the Tories in a landslide election victory, handing Labour the absolute majority and Keir Starmer becoming the new Prime Minister.

• In the second round of elections for the Presidency of Iran, the (relative to Iran) "moderate" and "progressive" candidate Masoud Pezeshkian, promising to renew ties with the West, defeated the hardline conservative candidate Saeed Jalili by more than 3 million votes.

Obviously, the second round of parliamentary elections in France on Sunday is still out but even here the extreme right party of Marine Le Pen is likely to lose ground and miss an absolute majority of seats, not the least because of a broad alliance of centre and leftist parties to prevent the RN where possible (by dropping the candidates where the candidate of the other party of the alliance has had more votes in the first round.)

And there is still the big question of the November elections in the U.S.

But I feel it's more than a hunch to claim that we are indeed at #peakfascism : That the height of authoritarian rule, of autocracies, of far-right populism has been reached, their power waning, not increasing, and not only in Europe but in other parts of the world as well.

This is quite contrary to the general opinion and ubiquitous despair. Which is why I mention it at all.

I'm more confident than I have been in a very long time.

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