ATHENS – When voters in Greece did the previously unthinkable and defied Europe’s political titans by spurning their bailout proposal, some of the loudest rejoicing came from well beyond the country’s borders.

All across the continent – from north to south, from the far right to the far left – parties that have rocketed to prominence with populist rhetoric celebrated what they saw as perhaps the most direct strike yet at the heart of the European order.

“Today in Greece democracy won,” Pablo Iglesias, leader of the radical leftist Spanish party Podemos, cheered on Twitter.

The result was a victory against “the oligarchy of the European Union,” declared Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right French party National Front.

STRANGE NEW POLITICS

The enthusiastic response from such unlikely bedfellows reflects the strange new politics of Europe, which have pitted mainstream parties against formerly fringe movements that, for different reasons, are determined to tear down the systems and ideologies that have governed the continent for decades.

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Lately, the outsiders have been surging. And in Greece, they see the first true battleground in a much wider war – a potential beachhead that can ultimately help them achieve either Europe’s profound transformation or its undoing as an integrated union.

“There’s a general euphoria among the populist parties because a national government and its people have been able to stand up to the dictatorship and the bureaucracy of Brussels,” said Vincenzo Scarpetta, an analyst with the think tank Open Europe. “Greece has become a testing ground for the European project.”

But whether European populists gain or lose in the coming years may turn on the question of how the Greek crisis is settled.

The reasons for the populist challenge vary from country to country and from party to party. But they are all built on a shared sense that Europe has gone badly off track, whether through merciless economic policies that have widened the gap between rich and poor or through an overly permissive approach to immigration.

The parties also differ in their prescriptions. Some want to be rid of the European Union altogether and others seek to fundamentally reshape the EU from within.


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