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When up to a dozen world leaders and roughly 1.5 million people gathered in Paris on Jan 11 to mourn the murder of 10 editors and cartoonists of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and seven other people by three French-born Islamic radicals, they wanted to demonstrate that Europe will always embrace liberal and tolerant values.
But the more telling event may turn out to be a counter-rally that took place at a 17th-century town hall in Beaucaire, France, that was led by Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front. In Beaucaire, the crowd ended Le Pen's rally by singing the French national anthem and chanting, "This is our home."
Le Pen is at the forefront of a European-wide nationalist resurgence - one that wants to evict from their homelands people they view as Muslim subversives. She and other far-right nationalists are seizing on some legitimate worries about Islamic militancy - 10,000 soldiers are now deployed in France as a safety measure - in order to label all Muslims as hostile to traditional European cultural and religious values. Le Pen herself has likened their presence to the Nazi occupation of France.
Le Pen herself espouses an authoritarian program that calls for a moratorium on immigration, a restoration of the death penalty and a "French first" policy on welfare benefits and employment.
Long after World War Two, fascism is a specter that still haunts the continent. But whether Le Pen's stances - and those of other nationalist leaders in Europe - qualify as fascist is questionable. The borderline between the kind of populism they espouse and the outright fascism of the 1920s and 1930s, when Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini espoused doctrines of racial superiority, is a slippery one. Scholars continue to debate whether Mussolini was even fascist - or simply an opportunistic nationalist.
The real aim of today's would-be authoritarians - politicians who appeal to the public's desire for an iron hand - is to present themselves as legitimate leaders who are saying what the public really thinks but is afraid to say. And these far-right leaders are indeed increasingly popular.
The card they are playing is populism presented as an aggrieved nationalism. They depict Europeans as victims of rapacious Muslim immigrants. Le Pen, Britain's Nigel Farage of the U.K. Independence Party and others aim to come across as reasonable and socially acceptable, while sounding dog whistles to their followers about immigrant social parasites who are either stealing jobs from "real" Europeans or living off welfare.
Unlike in the 1930s, Le Pen and her compatriots do not deliver spittle-beflecked speeches calling for the extermination of other races. Le Pen avoids the kind of demagogic language used by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, a former intelligence officer in France's vicious war in Algeria, who called the Holocaust a mere "detail."
Indeed, Le Pen is now wooing some Jewish voters frightened of terrorism. She is essentially offering a slicker form of authoritarianism that brands Muslim immigrants as a new internal enemy. The new nationalist argument is that the individual countries of Europe must safeguard their traditional values by rejecting the liberal chimera of a single, united Europe with open borders.
This has paid off for Le Pen's Front National, which in May led the field in France's European Union elections, drawing 25% of all votes. And these numbers are only predicted to increase.
After World War Two, nationalism went into remission in Europe. Until recently, nationalist parties were largely regarded as a noisy but fringe phenomenon. The notion that they would gain public respectability - let alone wield power - seemed outlandish. No longer.
In France, Germany, Greece, Sweden, the Netherlands and Britain, nationalist leaders are seizing on the tragic events in France to argue that they have been right all along. They argue that the open borders and liberal tolerance championed by the European Union are allowing a virulent jihadist virus to infect their countries.
Le Pen insisted the day after the Paris attacks that Islam is an "odious ideology" In that same Jan 9 address, she said "The absolute rejection of Islamic fundamentalism must be proclaimed loudly and clearly" and called on French President Francois Hollande to suspend the Schengen Accords that allow for visa-free movement inside Europe.
Meanwhile, Alexander Gauland, a leading member of the libertarian party Alternative for Germany, maintains, "Everyone who has until now laughed or scoffed at the apprehensions of people of a looming Islamic threat are being punished by this bloodshed."
And Farage, of the UK Independence Party, which wants to leave the European Union, says that a jihadist "fifth column" exists in France, one that is the result of multi-cultural policies. In the May EU elections, his party bested both the Conservative and the Labour Party, winning 28% of the vote, a big jump from its 16.5% in 2009, the last EU election. Twenty years ago, it only drew 1%.
The vitality of all these parties is a direct result of the failure of mainstream political elites. Exhibit A is the self-destructive austerity policy that Germany under Chancellor Angela Merkel has espoused. Haunted by the memory of the soaring inflation that helped destroy Germany's post-World War One democratic Weimar Republic - leading to Hitler's rise - Berlin has demanded budget cuts and opposed stimulus programs that could help revive the struggling economies of southern Europe.
This is perverse. It has had the effect of miring the eurozone in unemployment and deflation - thereby helping create conditions reminiscent of the 1930s, when economic misery helped radicalize the middle and working classes.
Today, a new generation of leaders on the right has seized on Europe's economic malaise to argue that the real culprit is Islamic immigrants taking jobs away from the native-born. The underlying sentiment - the demonization of an "out" group - recalls the wave of anti-Semitism that helped propel fascist political parties to triumphs during the 1930s.
The credo of nationalist parties today is that Europe, the cradle of Western Civilization, is directly threatened by a new influx of Muslims intent on reenacting the Islamic invasion of Europe that took place in the eighth century and was only stopped by Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitiers in 732. It's a message that's attracting new adherents - some of them Jews, who feel threatened by Muslims.
Skepticism of European unity and immigrants has also proved a potent political move in France's neighbor, Germany. The anti-euro Alternative for Germany party has entered state parliaments in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg in the past year and its leading figures are making common cause with anti-immigrant groupings.
In Dresden, for example, weekly rallies against immigrants are taking place under the rubric Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident" or PEGIDA. Last October the turnout was roughly 500. At least 25,000 marched Monday - despite condemnations from mainstream politicians, including Merkel.
In the Netherlands, populist leader Geert Wilder's Freedom Party is leading the polls. In Greece, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party entered parliament in 2012 with the slogan, "So we can rid this land of filth." In Sweden, the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrat Party vaulted to 13% of the vote in 2014.
Though parties of the right have a history of squabbling with one another, they have begun to cooperate in the European parliament. If Le Pen were to win the French presidency in 2017, it could spell the end of the European Union and perhaps return the continent to a collection of feuding nation-states.
Franco-German cooperation, which has been at the heart of and essential to the European Union since its inception, would come to an abrupt end. The European Union has functioned as a way for Germany to leave behind an assertive nationalism that led to two world wars and create a new and peaceful identity as part of a democratic Europe. If La Pen wins in 2017 many could view it as a repudiation of that vision. The long shadows cast by the Nazi past would make it too difficult for any German chancellor to work with an authoritarian leader like Le Pen in the heart of Europe.
Certainly Europe's democratic institutions are far stronger than they were in the 1930s. But this is no reason for complacency.
A revived European leadership that addresses immigration and the economy is essential - or the decades-long dream of a united Europe will disintegrate, to be replaced by combative nation-states headed by nationalist leaders. Merkel and other leaders on the continent, for example, will have to allow Britain to opt out of the European Union's insistence on free movement within EU borders.
For British Prime Minister David Cameron intends to strengthen his island-nation's border controls. He wants to tightly restrict EU immigrants' rights, prohibiting claims for British benefits or public housing for four years and deporting those who do not get a job within six months Otherwise, he will be outflanked on the right by Farage's UK Independent Party, with the possibility of British voters approving a referendum for withdrawal from the EU.
The demons that European leaders tried to suppress after 1945 are back. It won't be easy to exorcise them.
© (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015.
20 Comments
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Alex80
Indeed, and I am very afraid, being an Italian person. Both nationalism and racism are very strong in Europe, today.
JeffLee
The center and leftists are extremely uncomfortable with the right, because the right has been proven...right. They have long warned that large-scale Muslim immigration in Europe would directly result in the kind of terrorism we are witnessing now.
Expect to see state efforts to shut down the right, not because they'Re wrong but because they are embarrassing their more powerful foes. We got a taste when LePen was excluded from the "unity" rally.
Security experts say Europe is only going to get worse, and it won't be the fault of the right.
gaijinfo
Many people (even historians) imagine history to be some linear progression, and you can't go back.
Unfortunately, it's much more like a cycle, with certain themes repeated over and over and over.
That's why it rhymes so much.
nath
Better at least stop the Islamic immigration now. Otherwise much worse is going to happen to current Islamic residents.
Jimizo
'The vitality of all these parties is a direct result of the failure of mainstream political elites. Exhibit A is the self-destructive austerity policy that Germany under Chancellor Angela Merkel has espoused. Haunted by the memory of the soaring inflation that helped destroy Germany’s post-World War One democratic Weimar Republic - leading to Hitler’s rise - Berlin has demanded budget cuts and opposed stimulus programs that could help revive the struggling economies of southern Europe.'
I regard myself as on the left and I agree this has added fuel to the fire but the author would do well to focus on another failure of 'mainstream political elites' - allowing immigration to get out of control and failing to even discuss it frankly, let alone do anything about it for fear of being labelled racist. I don't think it's a question of being on the right or the left to say that all countries need a sensible, well-regulated immigration policy which benefits everyone, including immigrants. It's a question of common sense.
itsonlyrocknroll
Jacob Heilbrunn oversimplification and political naivety fails to understand the feckless borrowing within the structural balance sheets of periphery southern sovereigns. Accelerated by the 2008 global financial crisis exposed the naked vernerablity of core banks that brought into question the very viability of the Euro itself.
The Euro must now be recognized a failure, stemming from birth in 1999, the result of gross bureaucratic mismanagement, the inevitable consequence of imposing a single currency on a financially heterogeneous group of countries, that fudged and concealed deceitfully there true economic balance sheets.
To dimiss Marine Le Pen as a pseudo fascist insinuating European-wide nationalist resurgence, Heilbrunn foolhardily misinterprets the people of France national mood, glaring exposing the crass and recklessly failure of the François Hollande Govenment to deal effectively with the radical nature of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism festering within western society.
JeffLee
I watched a debate from British TV, with Farage and a couple of working class people versus a mob of Champagne lefties: Russell Brand and most members of the BBC audience included.
As I dispassionate foreigner, I could only conclude that one side stuck calmly to the issues, stressing that UK should do a better job of monitoring and administrating one of its key public policies (immigration).
The other side instantly resorted to boisterous name-calling, to the jeers of the politically correct brain trust in the audience, spending about 80% of the "debate" time mounting a smear campaign. One leftie actually issued a threat of physical violence against Farage (I'm coming to get you, Farage!)
That reminded me that the slippery slope from far right to Facism is not nearly as steeply inclined at the one from the left to Stalinism. Especially now that 10s of thousands of tooled-up army soldiers are patrolling the streets of France, whose president is a Socialist, while dealing with a problem created by the flawed policies of the recent past.
ArtistAtLarge
As gaijinfo said, history, unfortunately, tends to repeat itself. It is amazing and very scary how in just two generations, people have forgotten the horror that was WW2. The hard lesson of history is that they will have to be reminded again.
Even more scary is the rise of extreme conservatism and jingoistic nationalism across the world which will inevitably lead to that brutal reminder. As it always does.
kcjapan
The drowning man will grasp at any reed to save his life.
Fear is what is driving a global frenzy of desperation. As the financial implosion continues to ripple through the economy and the religious hysteria of some creates unknown and deadly threats it is unsurprising some will profit from riding fear to their own agenda. For some it is pure racism, for others a cheap trick for the spotlight and gaudy apocalyptic salesmanship.
What bind these forces together is the fallout from the corruption of the financial system and the decade old war on terror. One of these can be solved with conventional regulation and the other is the Pandora's Box George W. Bush opened which hasn't an easy solution.
For the present moment radical lunatics, seeking soft targets, will continue to carry out pointless tragedies cementing fear of millions of innocent Muslims. Unless Islam controls these madmen the polemic of racism will have fertile ground. Sadly, as in America's example, fear will drive extreme reactions and divert attention from criminals using nationalism or security as a shield for any profitable abuse.
The far right hasn't any answers except to make an armed camp of Europe with them holding the keys and subverting the Treasuries to their own corruptions in the name of security. The last hope for peace will be spent if the public starts to grasp at reeds made of razor blades as they did in the States. Those wounds will not heal and were mostly self inflicted. Europe had best be careful to not repeat the past of just a decade ago, never mind whether it is wrapped in the gauze of thirties fascism or the certainty of national exceptionalism.
Zodiac
A lot of people are afraid of what mass media tells them on the other hand they see some truths in what their saying. Incidents happen and word of mouth spreads fast thanks to social media,also rampant immigration has caused a lot of dents many of wich lefist parties are not willing to admit and play the racist card every time the dissucion comes up.
Most important how ever is the fact that European countries need to work closer together in order to stem this tide,but also need put an end the rampant immigration to people who have no real reason for their immigration claiming they are fleeing the war but they could flee to Turkey or Morroco but they dont do that they flee to Europe why simple because of false stories of how european cities are lined with gold and everybody is rich,not to mention they have the gall to complain about their situation even tough they are well provided for when they arrive.
And most people in Europe are mostly just trying to preserve their way of life but as we see reality is a cruel mistress multi ethnicity in a country works but Multi cultural does not and Europe should adobt the creed "Conform or die" in order to keep the peace and as one mayor in Rotterdam said who is Muslim himself by the way "If you dont like the people who live here its best that you leave as soon as possible".
Ah_so
It was a silly outburst from Farage, but I do not think that having a foreign wife is per se inconsistent with being broadly anti-mass immigration.
If the space of just over a decade, the UK's population has grown about 5m - the greatest change to the make-up of the British population ever - much bigger than the immigration from the Caribbean and Kenya of the 60s. Apparently now 30% of all children born have at least one parent born outside the UK - a mind-blowing statistic.
If Farage said that no one could have a foreign wife other than him, it would make him a hypocrite, but raising concerns about the implications of such massive immigration does not.
Alex80
Agree. Germany didn't learn from history.
Eric Boll
Islam is not the problem. The problems are the economic and social situation in Europe, and the wrecleck US foreign policy in middle East
nath
Just as Jews are not a race, neither are Muslims. Both are religions with various sects.
Stopping immigrants who are percieved as muslims will do nothing. There is a large enough population of them in Europe now to build their own populations up, as they have many more babies than the old Europians.
So many bad attitudes out there. The passive Muslims need to get to work s¥to show that they are family people just like 99.9999% of most humans.
JeffLee
When four out of five of the major armed conflicts taking place in the world today directly involve Muslims, then maybe Islam IS the problem. (Jihad = hate.)
Europe's "economic and social situation" is top ranked in the world. European countries constantly dominate human development surveys released by the UN and other international agencies. Countries like Yemen or Somalia are routinely at the bottom of the list.
Europe's current "problems" are not strictly indigenous.
boweevil
Europe certainly isnt the only place haunted by the specter of past fascism.... One only look a little to the East...hint..hint..
Al Hope
The left is consumed with equating patriotism, nationalism and concerns with Islam as racist and facist to stifle any debate and hold on to their rapidly waning political power, which has ruined the productive skills of two generations and weakened security against obvious threats from Russia imperialists and Islamo Nazis.