Why Has The Far-Right Risen In Popularity In Europe?

[Kalimero]

Calculus of Logic

I don’t think there really any relavant anti-semitic politicians here in the US. The death penalty has mainstream support.

That’s why the terms “left wing” - “right wing” can lead to some confusion between Americans and Europeans. (When lurking on this board, I’m always surprised what you call “the far left”. Michael Moore i.e. seems quite moderate to me.

So where do the stereotypicial members of the right in Europe stand on welfare issues like socialized healthcare or state subsidized education? Do they want to abolish it totally, privatize it, or do they go along with it?

My impression is, they don’t really have a concept for these things. They could oppose social health care for some small groups, esp. immigrants, but they wouldn’t fight the concept. Like Governor Quinn said, you won’t get much votes for an american conservative economic policy.

Do you know why Le Pen wanted to prevent the building of Mosques in France (i read that was one of his policies). i’m guessing it was done mainly to limit immigration but was it also a form of cultural intolerance?

I don’t see how preventing the building of a mosque could limit immigration. Lots of people are afraid of foreign cultures. Le Pen uses these fears and tries to aggravate them. It’s mostly a xenophobic thing.

[mrsface]

*Originally posted by The Calculus of Logic *
**Thats interesting. I don’t think there really any relavant anti-semitic politicians here in the US. The death penalty has mainstream support.

So where do the stereotypicial members of the right in Europe stand on welfare issues like socialized healthcare or state subsidized education? Do they want to abolish it totally, privatize it, or do they go along with it?

Do you know why Le Pen wanted to prevent the building of Mosques in France (i read that was one of his policies). I’m guessing it was done mainly to limit immigration but was it also a form of cultural intolerance? **

I think the point about many of the far right groups in Europe is that they are wholly opportunistic. They don’t really have a fixed stand on welfare issues - they will simply argue that welfare is being exploited by Asylum-seekers/Asians/Muslims/Carribeans etc - the only consistency is the way they tap into fears about immigration and the supposed “swamping” of national identity by alien groups. Anti-semitism is less prominent than in the past, but the Jewish conspiracy theory still gets taken out and dusted off when they see an opportunity.

In Britain, the BNP (British National Party) tactic is to latch on to very specific local issues (eg local hospital closures, garbage collection), argue that the big parties have failed, and get themselves elected onto local councils. Generally they will present themselves as more concerned for the working people than Labour, and more hardline than the Conservatives on issues such as law and order. The emphasis is adapted to suit the circumstances, but there is always a racist agenda underneath the platitudes. In France, Le Pen recruited quite successfully in the vacuum left by the Communist party - disaffected industrial workers. The BNP’s dream is to be seen as respectable so that they can make inroads into the middle class, so they have been toning down the overt racism lately, but cultural fears about Islam etc are ripe for exploitation.

I think this is how the far Right has always operated. Not sure whether there really is a resurgence or that this is just what they’d like you to believe, but I suppose one danger is that what happened in the 30s and 40s is receding beyond living memory

[MC_Master_of_Ceremonies]

A note on the BNP (Not Banque Nationale de Paris): Though they have IIRC a couple of local councillers (I’m not sure if there is a position analagous to this in the US), which isn’t a great feat considering only a few hundred votes are needed, they have absolutely no chance of gaining a seat in parliment (something they themselves have admitted even though they plan to field a candidate at the next general elections).

Their actual politics are the usually nationalistic, antisemtic, racist, xenophobic, anti-immigration fair. Mrs.Face described their electioneering methods to a tee, most of the people who vote for them claim not to be racist (whether you believe them or not is another thing) and say that they vote for them due to disillussionment with the Tories and New Labour (who have changed their image to appeal to a more middle class people rather than their traditional working class constiuency).

All that said, they could not be described as popular in any way and generally provoke revoltion. A Conservative MP was thrown out of the Conservative party for helping his son (a member of the BNP) distribute BNP leaflets (he was not thrown out for seeming to help another political party, rather because of helping the BNP).

[BrainGlutton]

I don’t know what a “local councillor” is in the UK, MC, but in the U.S. we have several kinds of elected local multimember policymaking bodies: city councils, city commissions, county councils/commissions, school boards, etc. Is it not the same in the UK?

I’m a bit perplexed to learn that these European far-right parties are (still) anti-semitic. Racism, xenophobia, and anti-immigrant feeling I can understand, if not forgive, but how many Jews are left in Europe since the Holocaust? My understanding is that there are very few, east of Britain and west of Russia. And how can anti-semitism be a viable force with no local visible targets for hatred?

Concerning what the phrase “far right” means: Here in America, “far right” or “conservative” can mean several very different things:

1. Religious-social traditionalist convervatism – “family values,” the Christian Coalition, and all that.

2. Racist, anti-semitic, white-supremacist conservatism – a declining force but still very real, being rooted as it is in the native political traditions of the American South.

3. Nativist, isolationist, anti-immigrant, populist conservatism – a more moderate form of the above. Best represented, at present, by Pat Buchanan and his America First Party. These people hate Wall Street as much as they hate the New World Order. Unlike the overt racists, they probably will not admit to hating Wall Street because there’s all those Jews in it. Le Pen and Haider are probably closer to Buchanan than to any other kind of American conservative.

4. Foreign-policy neo-conservatism – an updated name for imperialism. Dedicated to the proposition that the United States should expand its military power and global influence by any means necessary. This is an important faction as it’s pretty much running the country right now, in tandem with the pro-business conservatives, below.

5. Pro-business conservatism – what’s good for General Motors is good for the country, etc. Corporate welfare, union-busting, all good. Military intervention abroad also good, so long as it helps business.

6. Libertarianism, or classical liberalism – pro-market, which is not the same thing as pro-business. Opposed to welfare for poor people; opposed, for the same ideological reasons, to government bailouts of troubled businesses; opposed to American military intervention abroad.

7. Respectable elitist conservatism – best exemplified by aristocratic intellectuals such as William Buckley. Combines elements of several of the above, as the occasion requires, while honoring the Old World Tory tradition of Edmund Burke.

Now, when I compare this to the European scene (as described in the above posts), I notice two very important differences:

1. In Europe, they’ve got something we’ve never really had here: Fascism, or authoritarian-militarist-nationalist conservatism. Our neocons are plenty authoritarian and plenty aggressive, but nothing like Hitler. We’ve got Nazis and Falangists here but they’re not important, never have been. In America, the most racist people, the Klan and so on, are also the most committed to “states’ rights” or local-communal autonomy, the most hostile to any kind of national dictatorship, or even a strong federal government. It’s really problematic for fascism to thrive here. The Europeans, on the other hand, invented it. Why is that?

2. In Europe, there does not appear to be any organized libertarianism. There might be individual classical-liberal candidates, such as Alain Madelin, but there is no important political party in any country which could be considered an analogue of our Libertarian Party – despite the fact that most European countries have a proportional-representation system that makes it relatively easy for minor parties to get into parliament if they have any local support base at all. Am I wrong here? Is there such thing as a European Libertarian Party?

[MoronosaurusRex]

Because Europe always follows America!

[Tusculan]

BrainGlutton: my guess is historical and politico-philosophical.

European countries have for the major part of modern history lived under state rule (see the process of state formation at the end of the Middle Ages). Before that, there was a strong local government (the local shire, fief, bishop, or city-state). (I’m not going into the periode before that.) For the whole period, your best bet, as an individual, for safety and livehood was a strong government. When that was lacking, you as a simple farmer could be the victim of roving bands or armies. Being a citizen of a city-state was considered something to be proud of. Self-sufficiency therefore was not really an option; the most self-sufficient people were always thought to be part of a community (for example, a medieval castle). It never paid to be alone. (and remember, fire-arms were a relatively late invention)

(And even the classic Greek city-states who prized autarkeia always intended that to be communal. Aristotle was quite clear on that: human beings are social beings. To be alone is to be a god or an animal.)

So the social and political struggle in Europe has always been on the kind of government and the way to avoid abuses. The only people advocating total withdrawal from society were hermits, and the Catholic Church has (at least at times) voiced strong dissapproval of this, since such opting out of society was detrimental to its proper functioning. The Catholic Church may have been another force, by emphasing (through Aquinas) the social aspect of human beings.

The US, on the other hand, was ‘created’ after a struggle against a government. When the Europeans were settling there, AFAIK they could relatively easily overcome the native resistance because of their superior fire-arms. Furthermore, the country was quite empty to begin with. This may have contributed to the idea of having entirely self-sufficiently obtained your own piece of land.

(Such an idea would have been ridiculous in Europe. Basically all land originally was ‘lent’ out by the king to his trusty noblemen, who after a while got stronger and less trusty and considered their land their own possession. All land possession in Europe is the result of either conquest or purchase)

A major influence, AFAIK, was the Lockean model of appropriation and government. Briefly put, it is the idea that the land you work on is yours to keep, if it was empty and without owner beforehand. That of course only applied in his days to America. ‘In the beginning, all the world was America’, he says. His theory is that government is only there to take care of communal business like police, and is never allowed to violate basic rights such as the right to property. (I’m simplifying, the post is long enough as it is).

Libertarianism originated, as far as I can tell, in Locke or something close to that. Since after the government managed to contain the threat that the original inhabitants of the US posed to the settlers, there was not very much for the settlers to fear, I guess. Furthermore, in many tracts of the US there was (and is?) indeed not much to be expected of the government in the way of security. Therefore it was indeed partly reality that a settler could consider himself for all intents and purposes to be self-sufficient, not dependent upon a government.

So I would say libertarianism originates in a specific conjunction of philosphical theory, political revolution, and physical reality, where it would make some sense. (If I’ve simplified the libertarian position in here, I’m sorry and stand open for corrections. But since the debate was not exactly on the merits of that position, but on an explanation for its foothold in the US versus Europe, I thought a summary account like this could suffice)

For Europe, such a conjunction has never really occured (in the early middle ages there still was the force of Catholic religion, with its societal thrust, as a binding force). As I said in another thread, Europeans tend to have more affinity to the Rousseauen model of democracy, with added human rights: democratic states are allowed to do whatever is legitimatly democratically decided, except insofar that would violate human rights.

There do exist Libertarian parties in Europe. I know there does in The Netherlands. That is a very marginal affair, heavily dependent on its U.S. counterpart for ideological support. In a country where mostly everyone is dependent upon state-supported dykes, it is hard to claim that you can be entirely self-sufficient.

[elfje]

I can’t tell you why in Europe, but I can tell you why in Belgium.

In Belgium, voting is mandatory. Everyone over the age of 18 gets a voting summons, needs to take it to the voting office, hand it in, and vote. If you don’t, you get fined.

Since WWII, and up until the last elections in Belgium (1999), the two main parties in Belgium had been in government, the rest always in opposition. The two parties I’m talking about were Christen Democrats and the Socialist Party (loosely tranlated as Labour, I’d say).

It seemed to work fine for quite some time, this coalition, until they got complacent. See, they were always voted back in office, and after 50 years, you start thinking you’re invincible.

In the early 90’s, both parties got riddled with scandals (I have to give credit to the excellent investigative reporters we have at home), and people started to see something was rotten at the core. Even more scandals broke out, and the icing on the cake was 1996, the whole Dutroux thing.
Now the Vlaams Blok had already some supporters, notably among the lower classes (the lower the education, the more radical the vote, studies have shown), but when the public started to lose faith in the honesty and sincerity of ther two main parties, they punished them by giving their vote to other parties.

Belgium is probably a very complicated case, as there’re two different “entities” in one nation: the Walloons, who are mainly socialist in inclination, and freethinkers, the Flemish, who are mainly Catholic and conservative. that’s why there’s a far right party as Het Vlaams Blok in Flanders, but not in Wallonië.

It took the Belgians a reasonably long time since the birth of the nation (21/07/1830) to reach some financial security, and the richer you are, the greedier you become. The first immigrants in Belgium, were the Italians. The Belgian government shipped them over in droves to go to work in the mines (late 60’s, early 70’s), as the Belgians did not want to work there, themselves. After that, there was an influx from the Belgian ex-colony, Zaïre, or Congo, as it’s now called.
And even later, as any Welvaartstaat (Prosperous State, or “First World Country”) can expect, there were immigrants from states that weren’t doing so well, economically speaking (Turkish and Moroccan people are the two biggest minority groups in Belgium).

The way Het Vlaams Blok gained power, is through the same strategy Hitler employed in the 30’s, namely scapegoating the immigrant populations for everything that was going wrong.
The working population was unhappy, they saw their money being squandered by a corrupt government (and if you want anyone to get moving, touch them where it hurts: their money), and they did not seem to be able to get through to these parties. (VB just blamed the immigrants for all this. They shouted that unemployment would drop drastically, if all immigrants that had settled here since the 70’s, were to be deported back home.)
So, when the next elections came, and because voting is mandatory, everybody queued up to vote in protest, meaning they gave their vote to smaller parties, and not to the two main parties they’d been voting for for 50 years.

Since Guy Verhofstadt is Prime Minister, (he’s a Liberal), there’s a “rainbow” coalition in place in Belgium, and it seems to work fine. VB is actually losing support, now. The government is listening to the public, and they’re actually doing what they were elected to do in the first place: represent us.
Not abuse the power they have and use it only to remain in power, which is what I see a lot of governments doing (like the Irish one, for example. But I agree with the old adagio, in a democracy, people always get the government they deserve. Irish people suffer from a political apathy. They don’t care. They’ve never seen it done right, so they don’t truyst any of theiur politicians. Sad…not just for the politicians, but for the population, who refuse to participate in politics, can’t be bothered to vote, and thus leave the way open for a corrupt government to do as they please, and get away with it, too.)

[OliverH]

*Originally posted by BrainGlutton *
**
I’m a bit perplexed to learn that these European far-right parties are (still) anti-semitic. Racism, xenophobia, and anti-immigrant feeling I can understand, if not forgive, but how many Jews are left in Europe since the Holocaust? My understanding is that there are very few, east of Britain and west of Russia. And how can anti-semitism be a viable force with no local visible targets for hatred?

**

Your understanding is typical, but nevertheless far from accurate -worse, it has never been accurate. While the Jewish community, say, in Germany, was obviously a shadow of its former self after the war, and likewise in Poland, one has to keep in mind we’re talking about some of the greatest Jewish communities on the planet pre-war. As such, Jewish communities very much existed at the least in major cities (e.g. one of my teachers when I was in High School belonged to that in my home town).

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, many jews from Russia had no idea how to ‘live’ their faith. Rather than going to Israel (which many others did), some considered Israel too strict for their taste and instead went to western Europe to live with their brothers and sisters in faith there and get instructions from them. As a result, the size of the Jewish community in Germany, for example, has tripled over the last 15 years, with a great stress to the integrative capabilities of the existing communities, given that there are more newcomers now than ‘oldbies’.

In any case, antisemitic violence, aside from threats against some key prominent individuals, are more a problem in a location-specific way, such as attacks on synagogues. Anti-personnel violence is much more prevalent against immigrants and refugees, for the simple reason that people who tend to act in such a fashion are pretty simple in their thought patters, and people with dark skin color are much easier to single out.

**

1. In Europe, they’ve got something we’ve never really had here: Fascism, or authoritarian-militarist-nationalist conservatism. Our neocons are plenty authoritarian and plenty aggressive, but nothing like Hitler. We’ve got Nazis and Falangists here but they’re not important, never have been. In America, the most racist people, the Klan and so on, are also the most committed to “states’ rights” or local-communal autonomy, the most hostile to any kind of national dictatorship, or even a strong federal government. It’s really problematic for fascism to thrive here. The Europeans, on the other hand, invented it. Why is that? **

I don’t have time to go into detail here, but real fascism never had a very distinctive program, but rather was highly opportunistic and populistic. As for key characteristics that make out fascism, they can be observed in various forms in the US, too, in various groups.

**
2) In Europe, there does not appear to be any organized libertarianism. There might be individual classical-liberal candidates, such as Alain Madelin, but there is no important political party in any country which could be considered an analogue of our Libertarian Party – despite the fact that most European countries have a proportional-representation system that makes it relatively easy for minor parties to get into parliament if they have any local support base at all. Am I wrong here? Is there such thing as a European Libertarian Party? **

Europeans prefer a more pro-active government, in general…but my time here is running out…more later.

[TwistofFate]

(like the Irish one, for example. But I agree with the old adagio, in a democracy, people always get the government they deserve. Irish people suffer from a political apathy. They don’t care. They’ve never seen it done right, so they don’t truyst any of theiur politicians. Sad…not just for the politicians, but for the population, who refuse to participate in politics, can’t be bothered to vote, and thus leave the way open for a corrupt government to do as they please, and get away with it, too.)

Very true. But the tide is slowly starting to turn. the upsurge in voting for smaller partuies was incredible. Sinn Fein has more seats than the PD’s but the PD’s policys of protectiong big business suits FF down to the ground.

[elfje]

*Originally posted by TwistofFate *
**Very true. But the tide is slowly starting to turn. the upsurge in voting for smaller partuies was incredible. Sinn Fein has more seats than the PD’s but the PD’s policys of protectiong big business suits FF down to the ground. **

yep, and the hypocrisy of FF towards SF is sickening. As far as I know, FF was once upon a time the revolutionary party, and walked into the dail with their weapons girded on.

The pot and the kettle, huh?

[dylan_73]

*Originally posted by TTT *
In a country where mostly everyone is dependent upon state-supported dykes…

Oh, thanks! How am I supposed to take this discussion seriously now?

[Tusculan]

*Originally posted by dylan_73 *
**Oh, thanks! How am I supposed to take this discussion seriously now?

**

What can I say? I wrote this post first thing in the morning over here. That sentence seemed innocious enough for a Dutch person (the Dutch equivalent, ‘dijk’, doesn’t have the same overtones).

BTW, I think I’ve gone a bit over the top with my post, answering a loose question with too much detail and too little references, and not going into the OP’s question at all. That is at least close to a hijack. My apologies to the OP and the other posters. It is an interesting thread.

[ruadh]

*Originally posted by TwistofFate *
Sinn Fein has more seats than the PD’s

Alas, not true - yet. The PDs currently have eight seats to SF’s five.

And elfje, don’t get me started

[Marley23]

1. In Europe, they’ve got something we’ve never really had here: Fascism, or authoritarian-militarist-nationalist conservatism. Our neocons are plenty authoritarian and plenty aggressive, but nothing like Hitler. We’ve got Nazis and Falangists here but they’re not important, never have been. In America, the most racist people, the Klan and so on, are also the most committed to “states’ rights” or local-communal autonomy, the most hostile to any kind of national dictatorship, or even a strong federal government. It’s really problematic for fascism to thrive here. The Europeans, on the other hand, invented it. Why is that?

Conservatives tend to really talk up the states rights thing, but it’s kind of a dead cause. And if you look at it, I’d say it’s mostly talk. Look at the thread about homophobia in the US, for example, where we talk about Rick Santorum saying he thinks that not only should gay sex be illegal (a point most far-over conservatives might agree), he seems to think infidelity should as well, and he says he thinks there’s no such thing as right to privacy. Hardly consistent with opposition to big government. A lot of those people talk big about smaller government, but they want to pass all kinds of laws getting very involved in people’s private lives, so it depends on what you mean by local autonomy.

[elfje]

*Originally posted by ruadh *
**Alas, not true - yet. The PDs currently have eight seats to SF’s five.

And elfje, don’t get me started **

Ruadh,

if you want to get started, there’s a thread in the Pit (My Boycott against Ireland, it’s called).
It’s been slightly hijacked and gone on to Irish politics. I’ve had a bit of a rant, there, And I’d be most interested in reading your take on things!

slán

[Governor_Quinn]

I’m starting to worry about the BNP.

In the local elections held today, they won at least 10 council seats. This, of itself, is not a threat, as that’s out of thousands of seats.

The problem comes next year. Then, they will be holding the EU elections, which, unlike normal English elections, uses PR. Under PR, it is possible to elect an MEP with only 12% of the vote. If the BNP keeps at the 12% of the vote that they’ve been getting in their base, they could end up electing an MEP- something that shouldn’t occur UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, as it would give them a HUGE foot in the door!

(BTW, if the BNP were to elect an MEP, would that force any privilages under law from the government, such as an automatic party broadcast?)

[ruadh]

The BNP have doubled their number of councillors, winning eight seats in Burnley alone.