France’s Marine Le Pen, the new leader of the extreme right-wing, anti-immigrant Front National (FN) party, recently praised a speech by British Prime Minister David Cameron in which he claimed that multiculturalism had failed in Britain. Although a spokesman for Cameron said that Le Pen misunderstood and misconstrued his comments, the far right appears to be resurgent all across Europe – taking advantage of a confluence of negative developments on the continent, including high unemployment and fears of immigration and Islam.
Because of the crisis and dearth of jobs, politicians are playing on emotions to win votes, looking for scapegoats, said Shada Islam, a researcher at the European Policy Centre in Brussels.
Here is a survey of some of leading far-right political parties across the continent:
Renowned globally as a liberal country which has historically welcome refugees, the pressures of foreign immigration has led to the rise of the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats (SD) party, which won twenty seats in parliament last year.
About 14.3 percent of the Swedish population are now foreign-born, including more than 80,000 Iraqis (most of whom fled Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime) and 24,000 Somalis (who escaped a deadly civil war).
Explaining the emergence of the ultra-right in his country, Per Ake Westurlund, chairman of Sweden's Socialist Justice Party, told reporters: "there is an increasing gap between rich and poor, increased inequality, and there has been no real anti-racist reply against this racist party."
Despite being frozen out of television political debates, the Sweden Democrats still managed to gain impressive electoral gains (5.7 percent of the vote in September 2010 elections).
The Sweden Democrats is led by Jimmie Aakesson who is only 31 years old.
Interestingly, while SD is strictly opposed to further immigration, the party has actually attracted some support from Middle Eastern immigrants, united by their mutual hostility to homosexuality.
ReutersAnother liberal Western European country which has spawned an extreme right-wing movement as a response to immigration from Islamic countries (mostly Turkey and Morocco)
Last June, Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party gained 24 seats in a national election – its best-ever showing, making it the country’s third-largest party.
Wilders himself has faced criminal charges of inciting hatred and discrimination due to his anti-Islamic film Fitna – he has called for a movement to prevent the "Islamization of the Netherlands" by proposing a ban on the Koran a tax on headscarves worn by Muslim women.
Wilders is the successor to Pim Fortuyn who was shot and killed in 2002.
"Immigration also has an enormous economic impact, “Wilders once said. “We believe that cutting immigration for economic reasons should be part of the campaign. Other parties are sometimes laughing about it and saying, 'Hey, you should not be talking about that,' but a lot of people here in the Netherlands, millions of them, believe that immigration and the economy have a lot to do with each other."
ReutersIn Hungary, a country with a long history of anti-Semitism, the leading extreme right-wing group is The Jobbik Party, which is virulently anti-Jewish and hostile to Roma (gypsies).
The Jobbik party gained 16.7 percent of the vote in legislative elections last April, placing it as the country’s third largest party. More astonishing, the party captured nearly a quarter of the youth vote.
Jobbik, led by 32-year-old Gabor Vona, has its strongest support in Hungary's poor northeastern cities, where unemployment is high.
Last month, the European Jewish Congress complained about Jobbik to Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, by saying that “parties like Jobbik stand in direct opposition to the values of the European Union that Hungary now preside over, The EU presidency could be utilized as a great opportunity for Hungary to lead the way against all manifestations of extremism and hatred.”
ReutersLed by Minister for Federal Reform Umberto Bossi, the anti-immigrant Northern League party is well-established – it is, in fact, part of the coalition government of Silvio Berlusconi. The party gained 12.7 percent of the vote in elections last March.
With its support firmly rooted in Italy’s northern regions (hence the name), the party has in fact agitated for secession for the north, which it calls Padania. It is the largest party in Veneto, the second-largest in Lombardy, and the third-largest in Piedmont, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Emilia-Romagna and Liguria.
Bossi claims that northern Italians are descended from the Celtic race, and he has described southern Italians (the descendants of the ancient Romans) as “pigs”.
ReutersThe British National Party (BNP), which has won European and local elections and even appeared on a mainstream political debate show on television, is the latest incarnation of extreme right-wing movements in the country that go back at least eighty years. In the 1930s, the British Union of Fascists (BUF), led by the charismatic and aristocratic Sir Oswald Moseley, marched through the Jewish neighborhoods of London’s East End, wearing black shirts, in imitation of Adolf Hitler’s brown-shirts.
By the 1960s, the fascists in Britain turned their attention to the large numbers of nonwhite immigrants pouring into England from Commonwealth nations India, Pakistan and the Caribbean.
The most prominent politician of the era, Conservative Enoch Powell, railed against nonwhite immigration.
Thus was born the National Front (NF), members of which routinely beat and harassed immigrants. Closely tied to the burgeoning skinhead movement, the NF reached its zenith in the late 1970s. The BNP, led by Cambridge-educated Nick Griffin, has tried to soften the party’s thuggish image by adopting sober suits and ties. The party, which once advocated the deportation of immigrants, now has moderated its message a bit by reaching out to Britain’s Hindu and Sikh communities in hopes of aligning them against Muslims.
ReutersThe Swiss People's Party (SVP) won 29 percent of the last election, gaining more than 60 seats in the Federal Assembly. The party wants to tighten asylum rules and reduce immigration.
Nationwide polls suggest the party could win big in October’s parliamentary elections. The party has been at the forefront of causes ranging from the prohibition of building mosques on Swiss soil and deporting foreigners convicted of crimes.
“At the moment the People’s Party is the only political groups which appeals to all sections of the population,” said a leading Swiss political scientist.
ReutersMarine Le PenReutersThe birthplace of Adolph Hitler, Austria’s principal extreme-right party, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), finished second in municipal polls in Vienna last October, gaining 27 percent of the vote. Under its former leader Joerg Haider (who died in 2008), the party scored similarly impressive showing in 1996. The group is now led by Heinz Christian Strache, a member of Vienna’s city council, who has repeatedly denied being a Nazi. However, he and his supporters have consistently opposed immigration and focused specifically on Austria’s large Turkish community. One of his party’s campaign slogans said “Vienna must not become Istanbul.”ReutersThe Danish People's Party (DPP) is the country’s third largest party, and has served as a key government ally since 2001, although it has no members in the cabinet.
Led by a woman, Pia Kjærsgaard, the party seeks to cut immigration and also opposes membership in the EU. In 2007, the DPP won 13.8 percent of the vote in parliamentary election, gaining 25 seats,
The party gained support dramatically in 2005-2006 as a fallout from the controversy over cartoons that satirized Islam in Danish newspaper.
Kjærsgaard has said: "If they want to turn Stockholm, Gothenburg or Malmö into a Scandinavian Beirut, with clan wars, honor killings and gang rapes, let them do it. We can always put a barrier on the Øresund Bridge."Reuters
