Hard-right populists are pushing their way into the mainstream

Western Europeans like to think they set the continent’s trends, but the wave of hard-right success started in the east. Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party won power in Hungary in 2010 and took over the courts and the media. Poland’s Law and Justice party imitated those moves while in office from 2015-23. Europe’s migrant crisis of 2015-16 was a gift to both parties, but they fell out over Mr Orban’s friendliness to Russia. That split runs throughout Europe’s hard right: in Poland, the Baltics and the Nordic countries, nationalists see the Kremlin as an enemy; in the Balkans and elsewhere, things are more ambiguous.