Commentary by Roger Boyes
The far Right is notching up astonishing ballot box victories across Europe. The financial crisis has created a sense of victimhood and a need, it seems, for parties that use nationalist rhetoric to criticize globalization, and which are prepared to offer up scapegoats.
From Geert Wilders in the Netherlands to Umberto Bossi in northern Italy; from Hungary’s Viktor Orban to Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front in France, strong personalities are coming forward to exploit the mood. They use terms that were once monopolized by the Left, community, social cohesion, solidarity — but, overwhelmingly, they are concerned with the politics of fear; fear of the outsider.
The far-Right grouping Jobbik did well in the Hungarian elections because it appealed to an almost tribal reflex. Hungarians were worried that funds were running out, that the welfare system was beginning to crack, that there was not enough to go round. Jobbik blamed the Gypsies and won seats in parliament. And its rhetorical drum beat, drawn from centuries of central European anti-Semitism, suggested that a cosmopolitan global plot was making nonsense of the toil of honest Hungarians.
The far Right has a new enemy, of course: the Muslim in Europe. Islamophobia has, for these slickly tailored new rightists, replaced Holocaust denial as a bonding element. Indeed, both Mr Wilders and the anti-mosque movements in Germany seek to make allies of Jewish activists, arguing that the main cause of anti-Semitism is not skinheads performing Hitler salutes but radical Muslim preachers.
The key question facing the mainstream conservative parties is how to stop defection to the radicalized fringe.
President Sarkozy has decided to campaign fiercely on the issue of Muslim clothing, which is supposed to demonstrate a commitment to a secular state and toughness towards Muslim citizens who are reluctant to be assimilated. The proposed ban on the full-face veil has in this way become an easy option for conservative parties.
This masks the fact that immigration, the subject that has concerned the European public for over a decade, has been silently dropped from the Establishment agenda, and the far Right, especially in Western Europe, now claims to be taboo-breakers, speakers of hidden truths. And voters are starting to believe their propaganda.
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