Now Far Right Truly European Phenomenon
On Monday the far right British National Party (BNP) under Nick Griffin (top) won its first two seats in the European Parliament. See this story about the BNP below:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1091192.html
The BNP gained nearly one million votes in Britain and over six per cent of the popular vote. Given the recent corruption scandals that have indicted all British parties of the right and left and the economic recession, this was not completely surprising. The anti-immigrant, anti-EU, and anti-globalization message of the BNP has finally made inroads with British voters. The extremely low turnout for European electoral contests also helped the BNP.
Now the BNP has finally joined a pan-European trend of turning towards the far right, anti-immigrant politics, and the scapegoating of the Muslim Other. The trailblazer in anti-immigrant politics was the French Front National (FN), winning municipal and regional seats as early as the mid-1980s. Then came the shocking participation of the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI - Italian Social Movement), turned "post-fascist" Alleanza Nazionale (AN - National Alliance) in 1995, in national coalition governments in 1994 and several other times in the new millennium. The AN is now part of Berlusconi's ruling conservative Il Popolo della Libertà coalition in Italy. It has even decided to merge with Berlusconi's aforementioned centre-right political party. In Austria, the far right Freedom Party joined the national coalition government in 2000, despite widespread international condemnation.
In the 1990s and new century other formerly mild social democratic bastions saw far right parties make impressive gains through an appeal to xenophobic nativism, which insisted that welfare rights and citizenship ought to be given to "natives" only (i.e., Christian, European, white, non-Muslims). These parties made inroads in Scandinavia (Progress parties in Norway and Denmark, as they were ironically named), Holland, Belgium, and Germany (thank god, to a lesser extent). In Eastern European countries like Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia, far right anti-Semitic and anti-gypsy parties have become more politically powerful. In Hungary, Jobik, an anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic party, finished third in 2009 European elections with about fourteen per cent of the popular vote.
So the BNP is just jumping on a European far right bandwagon that continues to view national identity in rather static, homogeneous terms. Britain was historically slow to ride the fascist inter-war years wave. It essentially resisted the fascist and authoritarian tide sweeping Europe, although there was a British Union of Fascists (BUF) under a Mussolini imitator, Oswald Mosley. Countries that did embrace fascism or serious collaboration with the Nazis are more likely to see its return today: Germany, Italy, Austria, Romania, and Hungary. Germany is probably the mildest case precisely because its de-Nazification process has been the most profound. This was not the case for Italy, Austria, Romania, and Hungary, where the far right is returning with a vengeance. In France, a strong far right-wing tradition and Vichy collaboration in conjunction with a charismatic leader (Jean-Marie Le Pen) and concrete issues (e.g., immigration, crime, economic decline, the dramatic demise of the left, and the perception of corruption of all established parties) assisted the rise of the FN. The FN miraculously made it to the second round of the French presidential elections in 2002, finishing with 5.5 million votes and close to 18 per cent of the popular vote. Chirac trounced Le Pen in the second round, winning more than 80 per cent of the popular vote, but the far right had truly arrived in France. Croatia, which also had a sordid history of Nazi collaboration under the Ustashe regime from 1940-1, saw its first leader after the fall of Yugoslavia refuse to acknowledge the creation of concentration camps for killing Serbs (as well as Jews) under the genocidal philo-Nazi state.
Britain's turn towards the BNP now makes the far right a truly European phenomenon. That the British did not embrace the BNP message earlier is linked to the powerful history of anti-fascism in Britain. That other countries embraced it sooner is a testament to the magnetic pull of far right-wing historical memories in numerous European countries outside Britain.
Tamir Bar-On
Thank God that the British have finally woke up to thr threat of over population, immigration and islam.
ReplyDeleteThings now can only get better.
Dear Anonymous,
ReplyDeletePopulation (or over population), immigration, and Islam are not per se problems. They are merely symptoms of a global capitalism that increasingly leads people to migrate to economically prosperous and politically stable zones of the world (largely in the West). Moreover, when the West fears Islam and immigration it is because it sees the demise of its own once defined identity. Finally, Islamism is a political threat, but not Islam itself. There are many paths Muslims can take and Islamism is certainly the most destructive. Islamism is more popular in many parts of the world, as well as in the West, since like far right-wing political parties it reacts to the increasing openness of globalization, the fear of worldwide homogeneity, and lack of political and economic sovereignty...That the far right gains in Britain means things will get worse. The Islamists will confront the far right in a deadly game that can only mean a clash of civilizations, immigration restrictions, and the decline of real tolerance on all sides.
Tamir Bar-On