Posted on 04/21/2002 8:41:02 PM PDT by Timesink
Right-wing tide surges straight to the heart of Europe
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels
(Filed: 22/04/2002)
EUROPE'S rising Right-wing tide swept into the core countries of the European Union yesterday, rocking Germany's Social Democrats and threatening France's socialist government.
Over the last two years, Austria, Italy, Denmark, Portugal, and Norway have all turned against the centre-Left consensus that had such a lock on Europe during the 1990s, opting instead for law-and-order parties promising tax cuts, deregulation, and a much tougher line on immigrants.
But the pace is now quickening as ever more radical figures build mass support, often outflanking the conventional centre-Right with wild rhetoric.
Even Holland, the model of easy-going tolerance, has fallen under the spell of Pim Fortuyn, an anti-Islamic populist who came from nowhere last month to take control of Rotterdam.
Just across the border, the Flemish Vlaams Blok far-Right movement is now the biggest party in Antwerp, much to the horror of Belgium's press and the political establishment.
In both Rotterdam and Antwerp, Muslim populations dominate very large quarters, living in uneasy truce with a white working class that has never accepted the legitimacy of mass immigration from the Third World.
Now France's industrial cities, led by Marseilles, are following suit, and the political earthquake can no longer be ignored.
The second-place finish of Jean-Marie Le Pen is all the more stunning given that the Right-wing vote was split so many ways - shared with the Hunting and Fishing Party; a rival National Front candidate; another candidate promising zero-tolerance on crime; and Jean-Pierre Chevenement extolling "sovereignty".
Taken together they amount to a devastating defeat for all the forces of the French Left, challenging the long-held assumption that the French nation is fundamentally committed to a bedrock welfare state in a "social Europe" with high taxes.
The shift to the Right is subtly different across the mosaic of Europe's tribal nations.
In Germany, the Christian Democrats increased their vote from 22 to 37 per cent in the depressed rust-belt land of Saxony-Anhalt, carving into the core support of the Left by turning the election into a verdict on Chancellor Schröder's failure to make a dent on Germany's four million unemployed.
The pro-business Free Democrats went up from four to 13 per cent.
While in Denmark last November, the free-market Ventre Party swept the country after 80 years in the wilderness, promising to preserve Denmark's public services, but also tapping into fears that mass immigration threatened the nation's cradle-to-grave welfare model, and the tight-knit feeling of Danish society.
In Brussels last night, European Union officials were remaining studiously silent about the surging fortunes of M Le Pen's French National Front.
Nobody wants to repeat the disastrous mistake made two years ago when the EU reacted precipitously to the triumph of Jorg Haider's far-Right Freedom Party in Austria by issuing a formal warning that Vienna would face punitive measures if Haider's party was allowed to join the ruling coalition.
The move was widely viewed as an attempt to overturn the result of a free democratic election in a member state before there had been any violation of civilized conduct or human rights.
In the end the EU was forced to climb down ignominiously.
At the time, the Left controlled most EU capitals. Now Silvio Berlusconi is in power in Rome, backed by a coalition including the "post-fascist" Alleanza Nazionale, which boasts Allesandra Mussollini as one of its leaders, as well as the anti-immigrant Northern League of Umberto Bossi, who recently excoriated the EU as a relic of "Stalinism".
In Madrid, Spain's centre-Right prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, holds the chair as the EU's rotating president, and no EU initiative can get off the ground without his blessing.
Germany's political establishment is in uproar at the prospect of Italy's Silvio Berlusconi taking a significant stake in the German media as he and other tycoons, including Rupert Murdoch, circle the floundering Kirch newspaper and television empire. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/657041/posts
Sounds more like sour grapes than anything else. Jews are mostly on the left or far left. When countries move right and they don't, you hear this whining about antisemitism when all that occurs is more and more people don't agree with their political philosophy. Now the Muslims...that is a different matter.
Now, if he could just manage to get a stake in Vivendi...
Whereas I personally do not understand the socialist facination of many Jewish people both in Europe and the US ...
(unless it is their tradition of being personally responsible for each other, and extrapolating it to the government-as evidenced in Israel with the strain this philosophy of socialism has put upon its economy-but I digress)
...what I was referring to as anti-semitism was ACTIONS against Jews (including synagogues) not their differing political philosophy!
But, I guess to you whether Jews and their property should be attacked IS just a difference in philosophy.
I read this as a comment on the Demoncrats here in the US of A!
Not that I particularly care, but the term 'anti-Semitic' (with or w/o caps) means, these days, 'anti-Jew'. Would I prefer that Israel survive? Yes, I would, for it is a productive nation, as opposed to many of its neigbbors. Would I complain if Israel did NOT survive? Not much, IF the assorted a$$holes in the region would then do the SF-squared (that's sit-the-f***-down-and-shut-the-f***-up, for the uninformed).
But, they won't. They'll have to be exterminated at some point...either economically (as in the case of the late, unlamented Soviet Union), or absolutely (as in the case of the Carthaginians after the Punic Wars).
Has it dawned on anyone that BOTH sides are extortionists here? Just asking. 'Support us, or we'll cause you a lot of trouble' -- that's the message, my friend, on both sides.
I predict you will see an assault on conservatives everywhere now that left (or center leftists) have lost in France. And they will (erroneously--but what else is new) try to paint anyone who is not a leftist as a "Nazi."
Ah yes. The EU is specifically mentioned in the Bible. Strange that few have heeded the specific biblical warning about the EU.
Try National Socialist German (Deutsche) Workers Party. The NSDAP was explicitly anti-Democratic and promoted the so-called "leadership principle". The Bolsheviks (majority) were a small faction of the Russian Socialist Workers Party. The similarities are obvious.
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