Fascism wreaked havoc in Europe in the 1930s, and when World War II ended in 1945, remnants of far-right parties reappeared on the fringes of the political scene.
In the 1980s, when all that had begun to fall into oblivion, some of those parties began to feed on protest votes when the controversy around immigration broke out, fueled by the sensationalist press in search of easy news.
the traditional right-wing fascist parties have chosen to moderate their message and the profile of their sympathizers and profess a «sweetened fascism». What were once purely fascist parties are now right-wing populist parties whose adherents constitute a diverse flock that ranges from people of fascist ideology to racists, xenophobes and alienated working-class whites.
They are now expressed in terms of nation, tradition, sovereignty, and community, instead of eugenics, extermination, and homeland. Third, these parties deliberately try to reduce the differences that separate them from the traditional democratic parties by toning down their speech, while the traditional parties appropriate these expressions of great effect for electoral purposes and thus encourage the new language racist slips into moderate speech.
Fueled by the expansion of Europe to the East, which has not contributed to fostering tolerance, the prejudices repressed for decades by the communist regimes have resurfaced and serve as an argument for new and outlandish politicians and parties with racist, xenophobic and intolerant ideologies.
An example of the success of these new strategies in Europe is the promulgation of laws to guarantee tolerance in a continent that previously lavished it.
Another is that the extreme right now has sufficient numerical support and confidence to officially constitute a political group in Europe. The creation in 2007 of the Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty (ITS) Group in the European Parliament allowed the extreme right-wing and racist parties of Austria, Belgium, France and Italy, as well as Bulgaria and Romania–the last two countries to join the the European Union — , joined by an independent MEP expelled from the United Kingdom Independence Party not for his ideas but for being accused of fraud in receiving social benefits.
The fact that among the current 785 MEPs there are more racist politicians than representatives of the 15 million people who live in countries of the European Union who belong to ethnic minorities or are nationals of third countries and who, taken together, would constitute the eighth » country» with the largest population of the 27 countries of the European Union, is indicative of prevailing trends.
The 19 members of the ITS Group include some of Europe’s leading far-right party figures, and despite the rhetoric, their true views are quite apparent.
The leader of the ITS Group is the French MEP Bruno Gollnisch, number two of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National, prosecuted in January 2007 for denying the Holocaust.
Andreas Moelzer was responsible for the success of Jörg Haider’s Liberal Party of Austria (FPÖ), the same Haider who refused to condemn a terrorist attack that killed four Roma.
Frank Vanhecke is the leader of the Flemish Vlaams Belang party, which advocates that immigrants must fully integrate into Western culture or be repatriated.
However, the three are trying to reposition the ITS Group and ensure that it is part of the mainstream of European politics.
An indication of this change of image is that they finally decided to reject the name «Europe of Fatherlands», which evokes Hitler and the Nazis, for their group, despite the fact that they used that name in the newsletter published jointly by the majority of its current members.
The makeover was engineered in the wake of the success of far-right parties in Austria, Denmark, Italy and the Netherlands, where moderating public displays of intolerance has paid dividends at the polls and in terms of acceptability as coalition partners. for traditional parties.
At the European level, two parties have managed to ignore their neo-fascist history and roots to such an extent that they are even part of the more acceptable and less controversial Union for Europe of Nations (UEN) Group in the European Parliament.
The UEN Group is an incoherent hodgepodge of far-right parties and moderate right-wing parties in a marriage of convenience, trading respectability for influence.
Part of the group is what used to be the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) party, founded by Giorgio Almirante, former Chief of Staff of the Minister of Propaganda of the Republic of Saló, infamously renamed Alleanza Nazionale, as well as the profoundly homophobic Liga Polskich Rodzin (LPR) or League of Polish Families, the anti-immigration Dansk Folkeparti (Danish People’s Party) and Ireland’s Fianna Fáil.
Europe is a reflection of the good results obtained at the national level. In 2002, Le Pen, who believes the Nazi occupation of France was «essentially beneficial» despite the deaths of 70,000 French Jews in concentration camps, came second in the presidential election.
In the 2007 election, his support fell by almost half, not because of his blunder but because of his success in 2002. The other candidates usurped his rhetoric and his voters, were tough on immigration and crime, though not with their causes, and indicated by their opposition to Turkey’s entry into the European Union that Europe’s future borders would be religious and not geographical. (It talk a lot Diana Uribe in this book and the fascism was the first cause of wwII)
The leader of the Vlaams Belang, Filip Dewinter, proudly announced that his party was Islamophobic, which did not prevent him from almost taking control of Antwerp, Belgium’s second largest city, in 2006, or from increasing his electoral support in the 2007 national elections and won 17 seats, only one less than the Flemish Liberal Party, the leading political force in Belgium.
In Italy, former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was keen to include his country’s far-right and fascist parties in his electoral coalition to try to stay in power. It was hinted that Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of Benito Mussolini and founder of the neo-fascist party Azione Sociale, would have a ministerial portfolio.
Mirko Tremaglia, who had proudly fought in the ranks of the Repubblica Sociale Italiana–the Italian version of the Waffen SS–was already a minister. In the end, Berlusconi lost the elections to Romano Prodi by only 26,000 votes, that is, 0.1% of the total.
In Austria, the split in Haider’s Liberal Party seemed to herald its demise, but in the 2006 national elections the two resulting formations won 15% of the vote, while the neo-Nazi Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands won in local elections in Germany. votes at the expense of the ex-communist party Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus.
The rise of the extreme right is not limited to «old Europe». One of the three parties that make up the current Slovak coalition government is the Slovenská Národná Strana (Slovak National Party), whose leader, Jan Slota, is in favor of expelling the Hungarian minority, which makes up 10% of the population.
The Hungarian Truth and Life Party, chaired by Istvan Csurka, is anti-Semitic and anti-Roma. Still, he is seen as part of the moderate opposition to Hungary’s socialist government, despite helping organize riots in an attempt to topple the democratically elected government. (The same situation like turkey in this date, the rise of nacionalism in turkey is very high)
In Poland, the ruling party, Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc (Law and Justice Party), has since 2005 formed an unofficial coalition with the LPR, which has poisoned the political environment with its Catholic fundamentalism and extreme nationalism.
the infamous Radio Maryja, with its ultra-nationalism, homophobia and anti-Semitic reputation, has become a semi-official herald of the government. (In addition to Ukraine supporting a neo-Nazi army and goverment)
What can Europe’s democratic parties do to start bringing extremists back to the fringes of the political scene, where they belong?
In the first place, all the parties have to impose a principle of restriction on themselves and not play into the hands of the racists by echoing their message in order to obtain electoral benefits in the short term and, secondly, measures must be taken at the level of the European Union.
Although all the Member States of the Union are obliged by their laws to combat racism and xenophobia, in practice the degree of implementation varies considerably from one State to another.
More rigorous and comprehensive anti-racism legislation would be desirable. The real challenge is to ensure that the laws in force are enforced in each country, so that all residents of Europe have the same rights and duties and are not divided by sex, race or nation. In addition, the welfare state that was in Europe until the 90s and 2000s returns. (I will also talk about it later).
escritora de acción, aventura y retrofuturismo 