-Caveat Lector-
>From URL @ bottom
> Listening to European politicians discuss the 'threat of the far
> right', you soon realise that they are talking about themselves
> and their own sense of insecurity. Tony Blair claims that the best
> way to tackle the far right is to 'make society more secure' and
> to increase people's feelings of 'safety' - reflecting his own
> sense that society is spinning out of control.
>>>Or if you're an American pResident, you start lobbing cruise missiles or
deploying other peoples' kids to hot spots around the world. A<>E<>R <<<
}}}>Begin
Article12 June 2002
The myth of the far right
by Brendan O'Neill
Is Nazism making a comeback? According to Martin Jacques, former editor of
Marxism Today, 'Not since the 1930s has the threat of racism and fascism been so
great in the West'.
With 'racist parties of the far right in government in Austria, Denmark and Italy',
Jacques warns that 'Europe is sliding into an abyss…and it is all happening with
frightening speed' (1).
According to Richard Overy, professor of modern history at King's College London
and described by the London Evening Standard as 'Britain's leading expert on
fascism': 'The assassination of Pim Fortuyn [on 6 May 2002] has ghastly echoes of
the savage political violence of the interwar years, when politics moved from the
ballot box to the street.' Overy concludes that 'fascism…is on the march again' (2).
Is he serious? That the murder of a cranky Dutch politician by a cranky Dutch vegan
is reminiscent of the revolution, counter-revolution, general strikes and descent into
world war that marked out 1930s Europe? Overy says we have to 'be alert', because
'history has the unhappy habit of springing surprises'. 'Who, in 1928, with a Europe
returning to prosperity…could have predicted that only five years away Germany
would be plunged into the most criminal dictatorship of the century?', he asks,
ominously (3). But there were many signs in 1920s Europe of what was to come - by
1928, Benito Mussolini's fascist party had been in power in Italy for six years, and
throughout the late 1920s Hitler's Nazis were gaining strength in Germany.
One US commentator reckons Europe is 'heading for a nasty fall', with its 'plague' of
far right parties: 'Look at the parties making the headlines there. The National Front
in France, the Swiss People's Party in Switzerland, the Popular Party in Portugal,
the British National Party in Britain, the Hellenic Front in Greece, the German
People's Union in Germany… All of them far right, all of them a threat to democratic
politics.'
According to German Social Democrat chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, tackling 'the
advance of the extreme right' should be 'top of Europe's agenda'. He declared on 27
May 2002 that he would not 'let Europe fall into the hands of people like Berlusconi,
Haider or Le Pen' (seeming to have forgotten that Berlusconi already runs Italy) -
while Britain's Labour Party prime minister Tony Blair urged Europeans to 'rally'
against the far right, and called on 'democratic people of all persuasions to stand
together in solidarity against extremist policies of whatever kind' (4).
Is Europe really heading for a new Dark Age, with its Nazi past coming back to
haunt it? Are fascistic far-right parties really 'on the march again' everywhere from
Greece to France, from Italy to Holland? In a word, no. The current obsession with
the rise of the far right tells us far more about the European elites' crisis of
confidence and legitimacy than it does about any Nazi reality.
Consider the list of far-right parties that are supposed to be 'plaguing' European
democracy.
Many of them are so small they are insignificant. The Hellenic Front in Greece is,
according to one report, 'a tiny party that didn't even register on the electoral radar
in the 2000 elections'. According to the UK Guardian, 'The Hellenic Front's
insignificance illustrates the comparative weakness of extreme right politics in
Greece' (5).
The German People's Union, one of three far-right parties said to be 'gaining
ground' in Germany, won just 1.2 percent of the vote in the 1998 parliamentary
elections - which, as one report points out, 'is way off the five percent hurdle over
which votes can translate into seats under Germany's dual PR/first past the post
electoral system'. In fact, 'None of Germany's three minor far right parties has made
headway at national level…. The postwar far right in Germany has manifested itself
largely as a neo-Nazi youth protest movement, with unpleasant rallies by
disaffected and racist youths.' (6)
As for the British National Party, it might be the subject of numerous hand-wringing
editorials and documentary exposes in the UK media, but it wins next-to-no support
at the ballot box. The BNP's best-ever electoral showing was in this year's local
elections in May, where it won three council seats (out of a national total of over
6000) in the deprived and racially tense north English town of Burnley.
These parties may have some fascists in them - but there is a vast difference
between a handful of fascists and fascism as a social movement with real power.
These parties may win many of their votes on the race issue, but they win very few
votes. Yet such tiny, powerless parties get lumped together with Berlusconi's ruling
party in Italy and Jorg Haider's Freedom Party in Austria (which won 27 percent of
the vote in 1999 and holds six cabinet posts), as examples of far right parties
upsetting mainstream politics.
Even the larger right-wing parties causing consternation among the European elite
and press are far too different from each other to constitute what one commentator
calls 'an increasingly homogenising far right threat'. Right-wing Italian prime
minister
Silvio Berlusconi is now talked about in the same breath as Jean Marie Le Pen of
the French National Front. But Berlusconi is a mainstream European politician
(however much Schroeder and others might dislike him), while Le Pen is Europe's
number-one pariah whom not a single mainstream politician would dare to meet (as
illustrated by Jacques Chirac's refusal to debate him in the first round of the French
presidential elections of April 2002) (7).
The supposedly fascistic Berlusconi is in fact a close political ally of Tony Blair. In
February 2002, Blair and Berlusconi formed a British/Italian alliance to 'champion
economic liberalisation in Europe' - with Berlusconi declaring that he and Blair had
'an absolute convergence of views'.
The late Pim Fortuyn (whose List party won 26 parliamentary seats in Holland's
general election on 15 May 2002, a week after Fortuyn was killed) is talked about in
the same breath as Austria's Freedom Party leader Jorg Haider. But Fortuyn was
openly gay and justified much of his anti-Muslim ranting by claiming that Muslims
are homophobic and therefore 'enemies of diversity' - while Haider is accused by his
opponents of being anti-gay, as well as being racist and anti-Semitic. (Though a
German newspaper claims it is 'common knowledge' in Austria that Haider is in fact
a homosexual, but no one discusses it because in Catholic Austria 'you only really
discuss these things with your priest in a confessional…') (8)
Indeed, the ambivalent appraisal of Fortuyn's politics following his assassination
illustrated that he couldn't so easily be labelled a fascist. In the immediate
aftermath
of his death, we were told the Fortuyn was a far-right racist in the same mould as Le
Pen. But twenty-four hours later, many European politicians and commentators
were praising Fortuyn's commitment to cultural diversity and gay equality. UK home
secretary David Blunkett said: 'I too believe in diversity through integration….a point
Pim Fortuyn [made] in his more rational moments' - while UK foreign secretary Jack
Straw said Fortuyn was not 'another Le Pen or Haider', but was 'much more
balanced'.
Many of the larger European parties that are said to make up the 'new Nazi threat'
seem to be little more than right wing. According to one report, the Swiss People's
Party, which won 23 percent of the vote in the 1999 general elections and is
described by some as 'Switzerland's BNP', is 'best described as hard right', not
'extreme right' (9). The Popular Party in Portugal, which has nine percent of the vote
and is accused by its critics of trying to 'resurrect Franco's politics', is 'not
particularly extreme', but wants to 'introduce tight immigration limits and prevent the
transfer of further national powers to the EU' (sounds like Britain's Tories) (10).
Jorg Haider's Freedom Party in Austria (27 percent of the vote) may be obnoxious
and anti-Semitic - but this is hardly a novel stance in Austrian politics. There have
been, and still are, many anti-Semitic parties in Austria - but there has only ever
been one Nazi Party.
Other far right parties are trying to appear more mainstream, and are adopting
mainstream arguments against immigration. The British National Party has a
transport policy ('more investment in public transport') and an environmental policy
('clean parks for everyone'), and has an 'ethnic liaison officer' who communicates
with blacks and Asians who want to find out more about the BNP. BNP members
are certainly racists, yet they seem to recognise at some level that there isn't a
broad audience for their racist politics, so they have toned things down. But what
kind of hardcore fascist party tries to win support by pretending to be a community-
friendly organisation that is concerned about 'ethnic issues'?
The BNP is miniscule compared to many European right-wing parties, but like
Norway's Progress Party (14.7 percent of the vote), Belgium's Flemish Block (nine
percent of the vote) and Denmark's Danish People's Party (12 percent of the vote),
it increasingly justifies its anti- immigration and segregationist policies in the
language of 'celebrating diversity' and 'protecting identities'. This hardly sounds
like
a return to fascism.
Despite their differences in size, influence, politics and policy, media commentators
point out that there is one thing that unites Europe's 'far right' parties - they are
all
vehemently anti- immigration. Even here, however, there are differences. Norway's
Progress Party wants to cap immigration into Norway at 1000 people a year, while
the British National Party is keen to 'stop immigration' into Britain completely.
Holland's List party, whose leader-in-waiting is a black man, is concerned about
immigration upsetting Holland's 'current cultural balance' of black, white and Asian
people, while the German People's Union wants to repatriate all immigrants and
'make Germany white again'.
In the discussion of the far right, European commentators have attempted to
squeeze very different parties into the same category. They have labelled a ragbag
of right-wing organisations as a new Nazi threat to Europe, using a one-size-fits-all
explanation for the supposed rise of the far right. In fact, the only thing that these
extreme right parties do have in common is that their support, the votes they win, is
more a reaction against mainstream politics than a declaration of support for
anything resembling fascism.
Where extreme parties win electoral support, it is not that voters are 'voting for
fascism' or endorsing everything the party stands for. Rather, it is a sign of
isolation
from mainstream politics. Across Europe, votes for small hard-right parties look like
a two-finger 'fuck you' to traditional politicians, rather than an endorsement of
Nazism.
Even the immigration question - which all of the far right parties flag up - is not the
same today as it was in the past. People's fear of immigration in modern Europe
seems to have less to do with old-fashioned racism and xenophobia, than with a
broader sense of fear and insecurity. Contemporary debates about immigration,
particularly in the wake of 11 September, express society's general fear of risk and
the unknown, more than an old-time hatred of Johnny Foreigner.
Being anti-immigration is hardly a political stance exclusive to far right parties.
Schroeder's Germany and Blair's Britain - the two leaders who have been most
vocal about tackling the far right - both have restrictive immigration policies. In the
same week that Blair stood shoulder- to-shoulder with Schroeder against the threat
of the racist right, his home secretary David Blunkett announced the building of
three huge 'accommodation centres' (otherwise known as prisons) in the UK, each
of which will be able to hold 750 asylum seekers before booting them out of the
country.
Schroeder has used his anti-far right stance to call for a further tightening of
Germany's immigration policy. Following 'Le Pen's success in France and events in
Holland', said Schroeder on 15 May 2002, it is clear that 'Europeans are concerned
about immigration'. His solution? To address their concerns by making 'immigration
and law and order priority issues for my government'. According to one newspaper,
as Schroeder heads for a general election in September 2002, he has 'made a bid
to turn the rise of the far right to his advantage' by 'signalling that he intends to
lump
his [German] opponents with the anti-immigrant populists of other countries' - while
also taking a lead by clamping down on immigration (11).
Similarly, Spain's conservative prime minister Jose Maria Aznar is using the far
right issue to put immigration back on the Spanish agenda. According to one report,
Aznar recently 'blamed the rise of the radical right on the inability of left-wing
parties
to address popular concern about immigration, [and] claimed that the left was trying
to run and hide from popular opinion on immigration and simply did not want to talk
about it' (12). 'But we do want to talk about it', Aznar said - promising to give
Spanish people 'less to worry about' on the immigration question.
As European commentators attack the far right's anti-immigration policies,
mainstream politicians are exploiting the issue to limit immigration into and around
Europe. Unlike much of the far right, however, mainstream politicians have the
power to implement such policies, and to make immigrants' lives a misery.
In fact, it is mainstream parties that make immigration into such a big issue in the
first place.
Take Britain, where there is little public racism today, and where people are far
more accepting of immigrants than at any time in recent history. Immigration only
becomes an inflamed issue in British society when the New Labour government
brings in a new policy, or issues a statement about the problem of Sangatte, or
builds a new detention centre for immigrants.
Politicians increasingly justify anti-immigration policies as a way of 'calming
people's fears' on the issue. In reality, anti-immigration policies put immigration
centre stage and stir up people's fears. Mainstream politicians have only
themselves to blame when extreme right parties then run with the immigration issue
and play on society's fears in an attempt to win support.
The idea that fascism is returning to Europe is nonsense. There are some large
right-wing parties either in power or in coalition, which might have loathsome politics
and policies but they are hardly fascists. There are medium-sized right-wing parties,
many of which promote their anti-immigration beliefs in modern PC-speak. And
there are small hard-right parties, some of which talk like Nazis but in reality are
small groups of sad men and women with very little support.
Yet this mix of right-wingers is being compared to the march of fascist parties in
1930s Europe - when the continent was gripped by class war, civil war, world war,
revolution, general strikes, and raging street battles between the left and right. As
spiked editor Mick Hume argues, the contrast of the past 'could hardly be greater
with today's lifeless political scene, where there are no mass political movements of
any colour and the likes of Le Pen can "stun" pollsters by winning 16 percent of the
votes in an historically low turnout' (13).
Some commentators and politicians seem to have cottoned on to the fact that votes
for the far right are an expression of disaffection with mainstream politics - and
have started to fret about the electorate's 'disenchantment' and 'isolation' from
traditional politics.
According to one newspaper, the French men and women who voted for Le Pen in
May 2002 saw the presidential elections as 'an opportunity to send a message of
disaffection to their leaders' (14). Another reporter says the votes for Le Pen
'unveiled the full and shocking extent of [French voters'] political disenchantment'
(15). Other commentators write of the 'chronic political disaffection felt by many
poor white people' in Europe (16), 'a general feeling of disaffection with the
political
mainstream' (17), 'deep voter apathy and insecurity' (18), and the 'electorate's drift
away from its leaders'.
Not surprisingly, some on the far right are exploiting this disaffection to win votes.
Jorg Haider points out that 'a gap has developed between the people and the
political establishment…and now people are rebelling all over the place' (19). Jean
Marie Le Pen accuses the French left and right of 'ignoring people's concerns', and
driving ordinary people 'away from political life'.
In response, Gerhard Schroeder says we must avoid the 'Haiderisation' of Europe -
and European leaders 'must re-engage their voters', to tackle our 'fear, insecurity'
and 'disaffection'.
This is where we get to the crux of the debate about the 'rise of the far right'. When
they see their electorates voting for nasty right-wing parties, European politicians
see their own isolation. They see their dislocation from voters and voters' concerns.
British, German and French politicians cannot believe that people would dare to
vote for the BNP, the German People's Union or Le Pen (especially when they are
told not to on a regular basis) - and they wonder what they have done wrong to push
voters away, and how they can make amends. In the supposed rise of the extreme
right, mainstream politicians imagine their own decline and fall, and their isolation
from the people.
The obsession with the far right tells us far more about insecure and uncertain elites
than it does about political reality on the ground. This was clear in the French
elite's
response to Le Pen's relative success in the first round of the French presidential
elections at the end of April 2002. Le Pen won pretty much the same number of
votes as he did in the last presidential election (about 17 percent) - but the response
this time around was very different.
In the past, French politicians employed a tactic of ignoring Le Pen (he's been
standing in presidential elections since 1974) or just denouncing him as a fringe
politician who voters should avoid. But in April 2002, the turnout for Le Pen almost
brought French political life to a standstill, with political leaders suffering a
traditionally French existential crisis. Many on the left turned out in force to
protest
against the Le Pen vote. The strength of support for Le Pen didn't change
dramatically, but the French elite's response to Le Pen did - capturing how the
debate about the far right tells us more about our leaders than about fringe
politicians.
French fears that Le Pen's relatively successful showing in the presidential elections
would translate into increased support at the legislative elections were unfounded.
In France's 9 June elections, Le Pen's vote actually fell. His National Front won 11.3
percent of the vote, a fall of five points from the presidential poll and down from the
15 percent it won in the 1997 legislative polls (20).
The European elite's insecurity means they exaggerate the threat of the far right -
but they also underestimate the extent of their own isolation. Schroeder, Blair and
co are wrong if they imagine that only the pockets of people who vote for hard-right
parties are disengaged from political life. Across Europe, there have been
historically low turnouts in recent presidential, parliamentary, European and local
elections, as millions of people haven't bothered to vote at all. And even many of
those who do vote are less engaged with their political parties than in the past - with
membership of political parties and organisations declining on a European- wide
scale.
Listening to European politicians discuss the 'threat of the far right', you soon
realise
that they are talking about themselves and their own sense of insecurity. Tony Blair
claims that the best way to tackle the far right is to 'make society more secure' and
to increase people's feelings of 'safety' - reflecting his own sense that society is
spinning out of control. Likewise, Schroeder responded to the Le Pen vote in France
and the assassination of Fortuyn in Holland by promising to put 'law and order'
centre stage in European politics, and to 'ensure European security'.
The European elites' fear of the far right also captures their fear of strongly held
political views - whether far right, far left, or far anything. Blair's response to
the Le
Pen vote was to call on voters 'to stand together in solidarity against extremist
policies of whatever kind'. For Blair, Schroeder and co, 'extremism' is the enemy -
by which they mean hardcore belief in anything. In a political age where consensus
has replaced conflict, and where the clash of opinions that was once the lifeblood of
democracy is frowned upon as outdated, Third Way politicians don't like the look of
anything that smacks of conviction.
Instead of launching a political fightback against the far right and giving voters a
decent political alternative to the likes of Le Pen and the BNP, European politicians
can only propose a law'n'order clampdown to make us all more secure, and a
promise that mainstream politics will be anodyne enough to offend nobody.
The far right may not be a threat to Europe, but the elites' response to the far right
could well be. In response to a ragbag of right-wing parties, European leaders have
called on voters to 'defend democracy' against the 'fascists' - but in the process they
have destroyed real democracy by sidelining political debate about important issues
in the name of displaying a united front against the far right. Democracy is reduced
to a straightforward battle of Good v Evil, where the electorate's only role is to 'do
the right thing' and vote for the good guys against the Le Pens of the world.
European leaders have also turned politics into an even more boring affair. More
than ever strong political beliefs are looked upon with suspicion, and the elites' only
solution to a political challenge (which is more imagined than real) seems to be, not
politics, but more law and order, to stop society spinning out of control. Add to that
the elites' promise to tighten up immigration controls to stem 'our fears', and you
can see that European politicians' reaction to the far right is more significant than
the far right itself.
In the obsession with the far right, the European elites are reflecting their own
crisis
of confidence and self-belief on to society more broadly. And society will suffer for
it.
Read on:
Who's afraid of the far right?, by Mick Hume
spiked-issue: Race
(1) The new barbarism, Martin Jacques, Guardian, 9 May 2002
(2) Why the rise of the right should worry us, Richard Overy, London Evening
Standard, 15 May 2002
(3) Why the rise of the right should worry us, Richard Overy, London Evening
Standard, 15 May 2002
(4) Blair rallies EU against far right, BBC News, 13 May 2002
(5) Far right politics in Europe, Guardian
(6) Far right politics in Europe, Guardian
(7) See Defending democracy - against the voters, by Josie Appleton
(8) Austrians stay discreet over Haider's outing, Kate Connolly, Guardian, 26 March
2000
(9) Far right politics in Europe, Guardian
(10) Far right politics in Europe, Guardian
(11) Schroeder calls on EU leaders to quell far right, John Hooper and Edward
Pilkington, Guardian, 11 May 2002
(12) Immigration the key as left faces loss of power, John Hooper, Giles Tremlett
and Jon Henley, Guardian, 16 May 2002
(13) See Who's afraid of the far right?, by Mick Hume
(14) The jolt in a victory on the right, Philip H Gordon, New York Times, 23 April
2002
(15) Le Pen vote shocks France, Jon Henley, Guardian, 22 April 2002
(16) Far right runs Lib Dem candidate close, Helen Carter, Guardian, 3 May 2002
(17) The rise of the far right, BBC News, 25 April 2002
(18) Far-right leader stages upset in French election, Jocelyn Noveck, North County
Times, 24 April 2002
(19) Do you wanna be in my gang?, Kate Connolly, Guardian, 31 May 2002
(20) Far right slips in French elections, BBC News, 10 June 2002
Reprinted from : http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006D931.htm
End<{{{
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