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MOVING TO FRONT FROM MAY 25–AN INTERESTING DISCUSSION IN THE COMMENTS, AND SEE THE UPDATE.
Or is there more to the story? Thoughts from European readers? Links to useful analyses also welcome.
ADDENDUM: On the plus side, the openly fascist "Golden Dawn" in Greece did not do well.
UPDATE: More on some of the newly elected members of the European Parliament. Wow! (Thanks to David Etlin for the pointer.)
Certainly not good news, but in any open democracy it is, I suppose, inevitable that an (very) extremist minority will eventually get together and secure a single seat in the European Parliament. 'The fascists are back' might be somewhat sensationalised though!
As for France's National Front, it is perhaps worth bearing in mind the the European 'right' is generally far left of the American 'right' and, as such, this is not as bad as it might read. That said, I am certainly no expert, but I suspect that many of the policies they espouse are likely left of the US Republicans, if not even the Democrats.
So it isn't all bad. Indeed, the concern that too much power is leaving the sovereign states and heading towards a quasi-European-federation is one that many Americans can appreciate (if they remove 'sovereign' and 'European'). Looked at from that perspective, an up-surge in nationalism is, perhaps, understandable.
All in all, there's a bubbling undercurrent of scepticism regarding the great project of integrating Europe and it seems that it's finally erupted this weekend. Whether it is right or not is far too big a question to address here, but, as a British liberal, any move to the right — whatever the motive — is always worrying.
As it pertains to Greece, the situation is not as simple as it might initially seem. As a Greek that is infuriated with this whole mess, allow me to throw my two pennies about the results.
Golden Dawn has received 9.45% of the vote (as of 26-05-2014 05:19, where 76,47% of the votes have been counted). This is a (slight) increase in their support since the 2012 Greek Legislative Elections, where they received 6,92% of the vote.
At the very least, it shows a persistence of its appeal to the Greek people, even after the orchestrated assassination of a Greek anti-fascist rapper in September of 2013, the known (but under-reported) murders of numerous immigrants throughout the country, many devious attacks on immigrants all throughout the country, and the arrests of several prominent party members (including party leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos).
Apart from Golden Dawn, Greece is also sending the following parties to the European Parliament, all of which are in some form or another contra the EU and the notion of a united Europe (all of them are explicitly eurosceptic):
SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) [With about 26.5% of the vote]: Came first in the polls. In its ranks, it enjoys various forms of far-left (even quite antithetical to each other) groups, including the Trotskyists, the Maoists, the Marxists, the Marxist-Leninists, the left-wing nationalists, and the euro-communists.
The KKE (Communist Party of Greece) [with about 6% of the vote]: KKE is the traditional anti-European party in Greece. It is also anti-american, anti-capitalistic, anti-imperialistic, anti-individualistic, etc. Nevertheless, it has never been a threatening force in politics since the collapse of the dictatorship. Just stuck up in the '00s (that is, 1900s).
The Independent Greeks [with about 3.4% of the vote]: This is a right-wing party created in the beginning of 2012, only a few months before the 2012 Greek Legislative Elections. This is a plainly populist party, masking its non-existent policy prescriptions under a strict anti-austerity and anti-European facade, further coated with anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, nationalistic and illiberal ideas.
Whatever their color, these parties are all full of extremists – or are extreme themselves.
The situation as described by Alexandros is very misleading. In fact, it is the standard, but failed, narrative of the ruling parties of Greece, which have caused most of the suffering of Greek society in the last few years obediently following the socially and economically disastrous policies of the Troika in Greece, aiming to promote the theory of 'the two extremes' equating the neo-nazi gang of golden dawn (a criminal organization, really) with the parties of the left. The ruling political coalition has been forced to be tough on the leaders of the Golden Dawn (especially after a cold-blood assassination of an anti-fascist musician and activist) but they have persistently failed (willingly!) to be tough on the causes of the abrupt rise of Golden Dawn, especially among the poor and the disaffected. Actually, the rise of the Golden dawn has been facilitated by the shift of the ruling Conservative party itself to the right. The governing conservative coalition in Greece has curbed parliamentary democracy in Greece. It's been hanging in power by the slimmest of majorities and unrelentlessly votes for bills that dismantle whatever little has been left of the welfare state in Greece and lead more and more Greek people to poverty and disaffection. In yesterday's election for the European Parliament, a significant part of the Greek electorate (led by the parties of the Left and especially Syriza, which came first in the popular vote) voted against the parties of the governing conservative coalition and supported policies that will put an end to austerity and misery in Greece. I was not there to vote yesterday, but I would gladly be one of the hundreds of thousand of Greek 'extremist' who proudly voted for the Left yesterday and sent a message of hope and change in Europe.
Regarding the UK, nothing to fear concerning 'fascism'. UKIP stands on a platform that just wants out of the EU, primarily on the grounds of there being a democratic deficit. There is a powerful belief among many in UK, not just UKIP, that when voters go to the general election they should be able to cause the country's laws to be changed, and within EU they cannot, many of those laws being made by non-elected 'commissioners'. I think there's an element of this throughout Europe.
The development is certainly worrisome, although 'fascists are back' is a bit too strong. In comparison, what I can observe on the American Right, e.g. tea-partiers, predator capitalism (a crossing of Christian fundamentalists and Social Darwinism) and so on, is far more worrying. If one were to compare the end times of the Weimar Republic (see Detlev Peukert's seminal book is still deeply insightful here) with the current political situation in the US, one would find far more problematic and frightening trends than in Europe (in addition, with American gun rights) …
In my native Germany, the 'first Neo-Nazi' MP mentioned in the Guardian article, e.g. is the result of a change in voting law, which means that even fringe parties have a change to send an MP (there used to be a 3% hurdle, i.e. only parties that reached more than 3% could send a parliamentarian. Germany's highest court declared this hurdle unconstitutional recently on technical grounds). The NPD (the neo-fascists) actually received a marginal vote only. The problem are protest parties like the AfD, the 'Alternative for Germany', which is a hotchpotch of protest-voters of all colors (who often don't vote at all), here you do find religious homophobes, closet Nazis, neoliberals (as we call proponents of predator capitalistm in Europe), and so on. They are dangerous because it is unclear what their 'voter fishing' tactics – i.e. using ambiguous language to appeal to every fringe opinion – will lead to, because they have no real political program outside of being 'against' everything. The problem with the Nazis in the 1930s was, that they had a political program (albeit, one that was, besides geared by an ideology, also unfinancable without eventually going to war [see here: Götz Aly's 'Hitler's Beneficiaries']) So , the AfD, after proving itself incapable now that they have a few parliamentarians may disappear (that's the usual course with these parties)m but their rhetoric and tactics may be deployed by the established parties to 'mimic' tactical successes. But then, if established parties use tactics, they may feel forced to have policy follow tactic one day… In the Netherlands, the right extremists have been dealt a blow, for example. If they had come out strong, the result would, perhaps, been really troublesome, but it's a good sign they didn't make the cut everyone predicted they would… The Front National is more a result of dissatisfaction with the French government than the EU, in my view. President Hollande is exceptionally unpopular, and the UMP currently has no visible leadership after Sarkozy and is internally divided after it's recent internal struggles, so neither Socialists nor does the UMP currently manage to motivate their voters (I haven't seen the absolute numbers yet, but wouldn't be surprised if the problem was a slump in voter motivation for some both main parties, whereas Front National managed to rouse its voter base and add a few protest voters that usually vote UMP)… Britain is no surprise, they have always been anti-European in a sense (they liked to negotiate special benefits and shun all responsibilities). In my view, they should never have been in the EU to begin with and their membership is a large factor in the causal nexus that has created the current economic and policy problems for the EU.
Ok, that's my bit said.
Italy saw an unquestionable victory for Renzi's center-left party, well beyond expectations (polls: ca. 30%, actual: 40 %). Berlusconi's party hit a low 16 %, and Grillo's populist party a mere 21% (expected 26-30%).
Readers should consider that the turnout for European elections is usually rather poor compared to general elections; and this should discourage us to extend these results to the electorate at large.
The story is complicated. First, many of the anti-immigration and anti-Islamist parties are also staunch defenders of the welfare state (given that many of their voters are elderly pensioners that makes a lot of sense). (In some countries the anti-Islamist parties are also anti-Semitic; in other places they are unhesitatingly, extremely pro-Zionist.) So, they don't fall easily on Left/Right axis. Second, social science research (I can warmly recommend David Art's Inside the Radical Right: The Development of Anti-Immigrant Parties in Western Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2011)) suggests that in many European countries there has long been a far-right voting potential of around 30%; what was previously lacking were skilled politicians trying to obtain these votes. That has now changed–in a lot of European countries, there has been a few decades of familiarity with skilled far-right politicians and organizers. Third, even among many traditional supporters of European integration, there is considerable concern over the un-democratic, technocratic shape it is taking. (Given the scale of hardship in Greece — and the incompetence and sleaziness of their ruling parties — it is no surprise that Greek voters have turned to a whole variety of extremists.) Fourth, as always, the story is mixed: in some European countries (Holland, Belgium) the more extreme right-wing parties have lost voters. Finally, European elections are very low turn-out, so that allows the extremes to dominate the headlines more easily.
Thank you for your comments Stathis (May 25, 2014 at 11:35 PM). Allow me to reply to them, if I may, since I realized that I might have not been very clear about the intentions of the post, and my depiction of the Greek situation.
First, and foremost, I did not employ the theory of the 'Two Extremes' as you say. I am not a believer of the theory, because I do not believe that the extremes are of an equal kind or nature. I am more of the believer of Jean-Pierre Faye's Horse-shoe theory. In that sense, indeed, there is a convergence of the parties I mentioned in terms of their extremism (be it extreme rhetoric, extreme actions, or the general un-directional upheaval that they are cultivating), while at the same time pulling away from the center. It is one thing to say that GD is the same in kind and intentions as SYRIZA – a claim that I never made, and I am so far from believing – and quite another to say that both are utilizing extreme rhetoric, propaganda and actions (of course, to a different scale).
Secondly, the narrative I used did not refer to the disastrous governmental mishandling of the economic crisis, their miserable negotiations with the TROIKA apparatus, the fact that many of their decisions went against the rule of law, the complete and utter disregard of human rights during their tenure, the undercurrent connection of the New Democracy party with Golden Dawn (i.e. 'Baltakos' scandal), their focus on austerity measures rather than growth-inducing and corruption-reducing reforms, and many more horrendous mistakes by the part of the New Democracy / PASOK government.
This is mainly because I assumed that the perverse and problematic nature of the status-quo apparatus would be apparent to even the least knowledgeable external observer of Greece. As such, this post was mostly referring to the forces that are commonly identified as extreme in the public sphere (whether you and I agree with that characterization, that's a whole different story; fact is that in the international media [and not only in the government-oriented Greek ones], that's how the picture is painted).
As you might realize, I am no avid supporter of the government, or even close to them for that matter. And I had never been. Actually, I have always been the furthest away. So coating my interpretation as the standard "narrative of the two parties" simply because it labeled SYRIZA as an extreme party (at least, based on the present conditions; I do not know how soon, or even how, it is going to turn all of its multi-directional moments into a status quo party-momentum) did not only hit a personal nerve, but it also reminded me of a long-felt complain I have from my old "Leftist Greek den":
That is, the complete lack of any self-criticism within its narrative. There has never been a serious effort to employ self-critical elements by the Greek Left. In fact, it is almost prohibited in the Leftist circles to make stark criticisms and raise concerns about core elements of the ideology. Having been part of it, and then being exposed to Leftist thought abroad (in my case, as part of continuing my studies, and work) it was a revelation to see how backward and full-of-paradoxes the "Greek Left" you would so proudly vote actually is.
In my case, the pride is missing. And it had been for a while. If you cannot even clean the enormous (and dangerous) contradictions within your own house, how do you embark upon changing the fate of the whole Europe? Isn't that egotistical – but also, dangerous?
'As for France's National Front, it is perhaps worth bearing in mind the the European 'right' is generally far left of the American 'right' and, as such, this is not as bad as it might read. That said, I am certainly no expert, but I suspect that many of the policies they espouse are likely left of the US Republicans, if not even the Democrats.'
This is easily the most inaccurate and foolish comment I have ever read on this blog. The Front Nationale are a neo-Nazi party, pretty much. They have a history of holocaust denial, jokes about gas chambers, Hitler worship, etc. They have moderated their image in recent years, realizing that anti-semitism doesn't play well these days (and therefore it would be wrong to infer that their voters are all anti-semites) but they still spend time talking about the threat that 'international finance' (i.e. the Jews) poses to France etc. Just a few weeks ago, Le Pen senior, the father of the current leader, and long-time party leader himself (he came 2nd in the French presidential elections in 2002), said to journalists, in front of his daughter, the current party leader, that he hoped ebola would wipe out lots of the potential (non-white) immigrants out there so they didn't come to France (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/21/jean-marie-le-pen-ebola-population-explosion-europe-immigration). Tea Party Republicans are of course awful, but I struggle to remember them ever saying anything as blatantly genocidal as that.
The only way one could possibly say that the Front National was to the left of the Republicans and possibly the Democrats too (!!!) was if one was defining left and right in purely economic terms. But that's just irrelevant to worries about the 'far-right' in the sense of Nazi/fascist ideology. The Nazi's were not all THAT right wing by this sort of measure either, though of course the enjoyed the support of the business classes in Germany. But the fact that Hitler and a mainstream Wall Street backed democrat might have had similar attitude to capitalism in some sense, doesn't mean much.
I have to say that I think your comment falls into a general trend amongst Europeans (I'm also from the UK, for the record) to assume that, somehow, all the real 'bad guys' in Western democracy come from the American south, and are dumb seven day creationist gay bashers. Meanwhile, parties of the xenophobic anti-immigrant right in Europe often have views every bit as alarming as American tea partiers. The smugness of people in Europe about how the awfulness of the US Republicans, awful as they are compared to most mainstream European conservative parties (though the Italian conservative mainstream was reaching Republican levels of ridiculousness, if not necessarily malice, under Berlusconni) somehow shows how much more englightened we are compared to the benighted, Christianism afflicted yanks, when deeply nasty anti-immigrant parties, some of them containing genuine neo-Nazi elements, are making inroads around the continent, is of course itself a manifestation of xenophobia.
Here is link to some useful expert analysis:
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/
My own (inexpert) analysis is that we should not underestimate the significance of this result. In both the UK and France, a far right party (i.e. a party that, fascist or not, is far to the right of any mainstream party) just won a major national election. It would be sheer complacency to shrug off either result on the basis that the party in question is not *that* far right or that the election is not *that* major.
In both cases, the aim of the party is to reverse European integration and drag Europe back to pre-1952 levels of fragmentation and factionalism. In both cases, the underlying xenophobia that rationalizes this otherwise irrational policy may not be printed in the election leaflets, but is obvious from a catalogue of unguarded comments. And in both cases, there is no reason to think that votes for these parties are mere protest votes — and good reason to think that, on the whole, the people who voted for them really do want to see the EU dismantled.
Worrying times.
My Romani friends were worried that the ethnic cleansing of their people by eviction and deportation, carried out by Sarkozy's government and now Hollande's socialist government, could increase under the Front National, who openly support systematic expulsion of illegal immigrants. Fortunately, I was able to inform them that "the European 'right' is generally far left of the American 'right' and, as such, this is not as bad as it might read."
'If one were to compare the end times of the Weimar Republic (see Detlev Peukert's seminal book is still deeply insightful here) with the current political situation in the US, one would find far more problematic and frightening trends than in Europe (in addition, with American gun rights) …'
Yeah, the Nazis win the election in France, but its the US who are closer to fascism…
No wonder Americans think we're smug and arrogant.
@David,
I am not down-playing the dangerous potential that Marie Le Pen and her party represent here. Not to see this danger would be, well, certainly not smart. However, the analytical point was and is that the voters' intentions in this election may be to punish the Hollande government more than supporting Front National's platform (point a) and (point b) that the infrastructural issues in American politics at the moment, i.e. the power players who finance the right wing, those who give ideological fodder (evangelicals, anti-science, gun rights people, etc.), and so on (see here for example the works of sociologist Michael Mann), in lieu with the current economic situation and general distrust in politics, paired with the many legal and federal states v. national government fragmentations, have taken an infra-structural hold (see, e.g. the privatization of the prison system and the need to fill minimum quota of prisoners and so forth – all of this has been reported). There are worrisome developments in the US, and (see for example the Free Trade negotiations), they concern Europe(!) and the same power players are around globally (see the role that American evangelicals, as was recently reported, played in the radicalization and violence against LGTB people in Uganda)…. Thirdly, as decolonial theorist would point out, the US are a European creation, so it is a problem European coloniality of power created, additionally, predator capitalism is certainly not unique to the US, and perhaps many of its tools and ideas are originally European (see Foucault's analyses in, e.g. In defense of society, Birth of biopolitics, etc., see histories of the influence of Hayek or Schumpeter, etc.) so it's a European historical responsibility, maybe, what happens in the US, too…. And, well, am I smug and arrogant? Hell, yeah, I could happily live with that accusation. If you're not outspoken and direct (and that does explicitly not mean calling people foolish and other things), how can you ever hope to make a difference?
I quite agree that the relativization of the French far right in comparison to the US is at best ignorant. But you go on to write :
"…The only way one could possibly say that the Front National was to the left of the Republicans and possibly the Democrats too (!!!) was if one was defining left and right in purely economic terms. But that's just irrelevant…"
It's precisely relevant. For the most part, the definition of left and right is economic. In France just as in the UK, there is no left / right divide between on the one hand the PS and the UMP, and on the other the Labour and the Tories, although they are still called so. As to the FN, they have recycled arguments of the left and thanks to it have very effectively managed to suck votes from the left. But a little bit of history shows that this appropriation is sheer oportunism. The national front has a plastic ideology, evolving depending on the situations. So their anti-euro position is hardly leftist, especially with regards to the xenophobic overtones of this argument (See the fantastic article by Frédéric Lordon, http://blog.mondediplo.net/2013-07-08-Ce-que-l-extreme-droite-ne-nous-prendra-pas).
A more general point on the election in France: sure, the FN was the first party. But 89% of the French electorate didn't vote for them. The FN scored 25% out of 46% of people going to the election, so that's 11% of the total number of possible voters. Doesn't it say something important about the election – doesn't it say that there is a major dysfunction in this system? It's not an original point, but it's worth pondering instead of automatically blaming abstentionists for their irresponsability and political lethargy.
I didn't mean it was irrelevant to anything about the rise of the Front National, just that it was irrelevant to the question of how Nazi they were.
David. While my original comment was, in hindsight, ambiguous, I can't help but feel you've gone off on one a wee bit.
I was NOT trying to say that the National Front's immigration policy was further left of the Republicans' or the Democrats' but instead that many policies and systems taken almost for granted in Western Europe are ones that are still debated even on the American left (healthcare, abortion, guns, etc.) (you seem to suggest above that the only political sticks with which one can measure the left/right-ness of a party are either economic or immigration-based, but surely that is quite wrong?). Of course the immigration policy of the National Front is heinously far-right and far further so than any 21st century policy should ever come even close to being, but the suggestion (and two American friends have suggested it since this news broke, likely in response to headlines like this) that Europe as a whole is going outright right, seems to be quite wrong (again, re healthcare, guns, abortion, etc.).
My second point, again perhaps ambiguously, was that I suspect many of those people who did vote for the National Front were doing so for reasons that — returning to the my words above — would not be alien to most Americans (state vs federal power). Would they vote for them in a general election? I strongly believe (and hope) not. Although, only time will tell.
As for your last paragraph, well…?
I only have limited time, so I will just comment about the Front National, since claims were made above on this party which are simply preposterous. It is truly embarrassing that people who are supposedly educated and intelligent can seriously contend that the Front National is nazi.
On the economy, the FN used to be the closest thing to Reagan and Thatcher that existed in France, but in the 2000's, it started to move quickly toward the left on that issue. This evolution has been very fast, in large part as a result of Marine Le Pen's rise inside the party during that period. When she became president of the party a few years ago, she brought with her people such as Florian Philippot who come from the left and radically changed the economic policies advocated by the party. At this point, there are still some traces in the party's economic policies from the liberal period, so the whole package is not particularly coherent.
But, on the economic issues, the FN is already more left-wing than the socialist party. And if this evolution continues, which it most likely will (especially after the recent victory), the FN will soon become more radical on the economy than any left-wing party that governed anywhere in Europe in the past 30 years. (This may not be saying much, but that's another issue.) One thing that is for certain is that it is already more left-wing than the democratic party in the US, at insofar as this kind of comparison makes sense.
People like Florian Philippot have been gaining a lot of influence in the party during the recent years and they are now basically in charge of its ideology. Most of them were followers and friends of Jean-Pierre Chevènement until they joined the FN. Chevènement was the leader of the CERES, a very powerful group inside the socialist party, which constituted the left-wing of the party. (For those who are interested in French political history, Chevènement is the man who allowed François Mitterrand, who became president of France a few years later, to take control of the socialist party at the Congress of Épinay in 1971.)
Although there are still people in the Front National who are antisemite, Philippot and his friends most definitely are not. Since the anti-finance rhetoric of the FN comes from them, it has absolutely nothing to do with antisemitism, contrary to what has been claimed above. (The old guard of the party, where you can still find some antisemites, hates Philippot and his clique, but they are being marginalized as a result of the FN's recent electoral successes and because Philippot has become Marine Le Pen's éminence grise.)
Marine Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was the president of the FN before her, is certainly an antisemite, but he is no fascist. He is a traditional right-wing populist, with a distinct streak of right-wing anarchism. The only people who think otherwise are people who don't know what fascism is and/or the history of the Front National. The Front National *was* created by fascists at the beginning of the 1970's who put Le Pen at its head precisely because he was *not* a fascist and they needed a respectable front. But things didn't go their way, because JMLP didn't want to be just a front and he quickly took control of the party, after which the fascists left it.
In the 1980's, Mitterrand – who was then president of France – encouraged the rise of the FN (for instance by changing the electoral law in 1986) to divide the vote on the right, while demonizing it so as to make it impossible for the RPR (the ancestor of the UMP, which is currently the main right-wing party in France) to ally with it. (This maneuver, by the way, was extremely successful for a long time, until in 2002 the socialist party was eliminated by the FN at the presidential election. You reap what you sow.) The idea that the FN is a fascist party, which is absolutely preposterous, comes from that period.
In order to see how ridiculous it is, one just has to read what the RPR was saying about immigration in the early 1990's about immigration, which was much more radical than what the FN is saying today. But many of the leaders of the right today at, such as Nicolas Sarkozy and Alain Juppé, were already in charge at the time in the RPR. Yet nobody would seriously contend that they are fascist now or even that they were fascist then. Again, the only reason politicians claim the FN is fascist is because it serves their political interests, that's just propaganda. At the beginning, it was just the socialist party, but after a while the FN became a threat for the right and they started to say it too.
If you don't believe me, perhaps you will believe Lionel Jospin, socialist prime minister of France between 1997 and 2002, who declared in 2007 on French radio that "during François Mitterrand's presidency [between 1981 and 1995, back when the FN was much more radical than it is now], there was never a fascist threat, so all the anti-fascism was just theater":
The poor bastard knew what he was talking about, since he actively took part in the aforementioned theater in the 1980's, which arguably cost him the election in 2002 when he was eliminated by the FN…
As was already noted above by Vincent M., a defining characteristic of the Front National is that, ideologically, it is remarkably plastic. (However, this may change, for people like Philippot are absolutely sincere.) Marine Le Pen is plastic because she has no political culture, so she is easily influenced by someone like Philippot who has some ideological substance, though I think he is intellectually rather limited. But she is very smart and would not follow him for long if the FN ceased to win the elections. Her father is also very intelligent and, unlike her, has a political culture, but he was never really interested in ideology. (Again, this is typical of a right-wing populist, not of a fascist.)
I know very little about the country-by-country details but as I understand it there's a fairly persuasive economic-based analysis across the Eurozone as a whole:
(1) being part of the Euro is turning out to have really bad economic consequences for many European countries, both because their currencies can't float to rebalance wage disparities and because the need to placate the ECB means crushing austerity regimes.
(2) the mainstream parties are nonetheless all in support of continued Euro membership and continued engagement with Europe on roughly these terms
(3) when people are suffering economically they look for opportunities to vote against the status quo, and if the only places to find it are at the extremes they'll vote for extremists.
I can't believe no one has corrected the misinformation about the UKIP in the fourth comment.
It's an unambiguously racist party. They may opportunistically exploit the EU's democratic deficit, but no one seriously denies that anti-immigrant bigotry is the beating heart of what they're about.
Sincere question for the European commenters from an uninformed spectator: Are anti-EU sentiments uniformally perceived to be synonymous with entrenched nationalistic prejudices?
Dear Sean T,
I perhaps cannot speak for all(!) EU member states in this regard, but mostly a) from within the German speaking countries, and b) from within German perception (i.e. media discourse) of what is going on in Europe, regarding that question….
So, I'd say that, distinguishing perception (i.e. media) from actual motivations that people have, that certainly not all anti-EU sentiments are nationalist-oriented. Some people are nationalistic, of course, some people are disgruntled because of the democracy- or legitimacy-deficit in the EU (Habermas speaks about this a lot, and sees therein a reason for many people's anti-EU sentiment), there are those who think the EU is too big (e.g. some countries are too economically and/or socially weak to be members), or some think the EU is a good idea but it is only an (economic and/or technocratic) elite project, and I am sure there is a few more perspectives I could mention. Then there is people like Zizek, too, who hold that while certainly a nice sentiment, something like the EU needs to be replaced by a real Left alternative to capitalism, "and so on and so on". Then you get people who don't care about the EU or their nation, so they are basically against anything that they think doesn't immediately profit them. And then there were a number of voters who voted anti-EU more because they were dissatisfied with the ruling parties of their national governments and felt that any time you get to vote, it's a good opportunity to 'stick it to the man'…
Now, as for perception, many media outlets and commentators were individually criticizing how the media and political class as a 'general mainstream' were grouping all these together under the label national extremists and how this wasn't right and horrible, which set off many of these people and people who would not have voted necessarily (lazy non-voters), to go and cast a protest vote for an anti-EU party. So you see the irony that the media critique of the media almost created a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy…. But this is, certainly, a tentative view, which would need to be analyzed more deeply.
In reply to Ben Burgis: UKIP is in favour of reducing immigration, but that does not make it racist. Especially in a country which has seen very high levels of immigration in recent years, and which is the fourth most crowded major country on the planet (i.e. leaving to one side city states such as Singapore). Note also that UKIP’s focus is on immigration from Europe (i.e. of whites) which under EU laws cannot be limited by the British government. Labour had an open door immigration policy, and the Conservatives said they would reduce immigration but have done so only slightly, hence people turning to UKIP (along with other reasons mentioned above – dislike of EU meddling, dislike of the financial cost of the EU to the UK, and protest votes).
Doubtless there are racists in UKIP, but the official policy is to not be racist, and it expels those who express racist views eg http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-27611960
Sean T: It's complicated. People criticise the EU for all kinds of reasons, many of them reasonable. The question is: why vote for withdrawal rather than reform?
In the UK, I think the single most important reason is that many voters fundamentally oppose the freedom of movement of workers within the EU, which is considered a sine qua non of EU membership, and which has led to substantial net migration into the UK from Eastern European countries since 2004.
There is a serious, factual debate to be had here about the fiscal and economic impact of EU migration. Current evidence (notably, a 2010 study by UCL) suggests that migrants from Eastern Europe to the UK make a net positive fiscal contribution, i.e. they contribute more in taxes than they cost the taxpayer. But it's fair to admit that there still many unknowns regarding the effects of EU migration on the labour market, the housing market, and so on.
The real problem is the peripheral role such evidence plays in the popular debate. UKIP and its supporters have no interest in keeping an open mind and seeing where the evidence takes them. Instead, they start with the premise that EU migrants are a terrible problem. If pushed to provide economic evidence for this premise, they tend to fall back on nebulous talk about the 'cultural' impact of migration, along with baseless scare stories linking immigrants to crime. That's the point at which the 'entrenched nationalist prejudice' becomes clear.
Thoughts about populism, the Greek case in reply to Alexandros, right and left:
It’s no wonder that neo-liberal EU policy bred intense populist, euro-sceptic, fascist, and left reactions. With populist vote Europe reacted to: the neo-liberal consensus at an alleged democratic center which legitimizes extreme austerity; to the abhorrent, fascist-like 'There Is No Alternative' discourse of governments (and their media) which impose austerity in order to resuscitate banks and the power elites. Also, lots of European citizens do not want their countries be run as businesses. The whole idea of a union under market rule and technocratic management undermines national sovereignty and panics nationalists. Others do not want to suffer economically any longer, especially when they are told that they must suffer in order to bail out another EU member.
Maybe intense populism is a passionate return to politics. As interesting theoretical work shows, populism (in its non-pejorative sense) is at the heart of the political process which is inherrently agonistic. In the EU case, populism seems to resist post-politics which lets technocrats and the markets run the show.
Alexandros above makes a straw man of the Greek left party SYRIZA. Branding SYRIZA an 'extremist' because it's off the 'democratic' center of neo-liberal consensus, is a short step from saying that SYRIZA is undemocratic. This would posit the 'Theory Of The Two Extremes', which is invoked to de-legitimize the left by likening it to fascist Golden Dawn.
The left is not undemocratic. It denies that the neo-liberal center is the default democratic position. They say: no real democracy without economic and social democracy; no real democracy for as long as economic and political institutions are under the control of unregulated markets and the oligarchic control of technocrats, banks and powerful elites. Certainly opposition to elites in the interest of the people is a form of populism, let us say, of populist democracy which is an inclusionary social and economic project. On the other hand, the populist and extreme right is authoritarian and socially exclusionary, e.g. racial, ethnic, sexual exclusion. Altough it uses anti-neoliberal rhetoric, the populist right is no real threat to the neo-liberal order because it is no friend of economic democracy; the latter diffuses power and threatens hierarchies. All in all, the extreme and populist right do not seek ways to fulfill the democratic project; rather they want to limit it. In this sense they just undercut the left turn towards radical democratic change-especially, towards economic democracy-hence serving the neo-liberal order.
The founder of the party strongly disagrees with you:
More to the point, though, in an atmosphere of pervasive bigotry toward eastern europeans, saying that the ukips aren't racist because the particular immigrant populations they're hell-bent on demonizing and scapegoating are "white" is a pretty silly non-sequitur.
I don't know who DanD is, but I can't agree with his comment and I'm surprised to see UKIP "talking points" appear here.
(1) The claim that the UK is the "fourth most crowded major country on the planet" (probably taken from the Migrationwatch website) is false: Bangladesh, Taiwan, Mauritius, South Korea, Lebanon, Rwanda, Haiti, the Netherlands, India, Israel, Belgium, Burundi, Japan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, El Salvador and Vietnam are all more "crowded" than the UK is. And I've excluded a lot of states that might be excluded as not "major">
(2) The fact that UKIP is, inter alia, focused on excluding "whites" is not sufficient to make it non-racist. Races are not natural categories and the stigmatizing racialization of some East Europeans, particularly Romanians, by the UKIP leader has been a big part of the recent campaign. UKIP also seems disproportionately attractive to voters with racist views.
(3) Labour did not have an "open door" immigration policy, it simply lifted transitional controls on migrants from new EU states earlier than some other states did. For other categories of migrant, Labour under Tony Blair was shamefully restrictive in my view: they made ever harder for refugees to get to the UK to claim asylum.
In all this I think it is important to remember that one can be anti net immigration and yet not have a racist bone in their body. The two need not go hand in hand, and yet that they do often seems to be taken for granted.
Of course, this has no necessary bearing upon the racism or otherwise of UKIP and its voters (and that debate is one I do not know enough about to comment upon with any credibility, but I suspect a mixture).
But it does not expel people with openly sexist views (women are worth less to employers than men), or homophobic/religious deluded/scientifically ignorant views (the floods are god punishing us for legalising same-sex marriage), or morally deviant views (it's silly to think 'rape' can be applied within a marriage).
I am British, born and raised, but I am not white and I genuinely hate to think what UKIP – or its supporters – would do to me if they had their way. UKIP is to the British National Party what Intelligent Design is to Creationism.
Interview in German with Jürgen Habermas on the election results (not sure how good translation programs are these days, but certainly an interesting read): http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/juergen-habermas-im-gespraech-europa-wird-direkt-ins-herz-getroffen-12963798.html
The concerns that UKIP express about levels of immigration to the UK – particularly from Eastern Europe – are shared by many who are left of centre. For instance, today seven Labour MPs wrote to The Observer expressing such concerns: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/01/labour-mps-urge-curb-eu-free-movement-open-letter-ed-miliband
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