Lurching to the right

It's starting to get scary out there. People with really weird hairdos and wild, right-wing politics are getting elected all over the place.

- Cathrin Schaer

Britain's floppy-haired Boris Johnson and the United States' orange-tanned Donald Trump set the pace. Then, last month, Argentinian oddball Javier Milei was elected president, and only a week later, Dutch neo-fascist Geert Wilders managed to get the most votes in the Netherlands' parliamentary election.

A year earlier, Italian voters took a similarly hard right turn. Shortly before that, the far-right in Sweden and Finland became part of their respective coalition governments. And here in Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany keeps rising in the polls.

It's the second-most popular party in the country. French and Austrian extremists are doing similarly well.

The nicest thing you can say about all of the latter is that at least they have hairdressers (although the Swedish fellows all appear to share a fetish for slicked-back hair, à la the 2000 movie American Psycho).