Posted on 05/10/2004 1:08:58 PM PDT by MegaSilver
It was autumn 1996. Four men were sitting around me in a central London pub. Little distinguished them from the passing commuters. Other than their baseball caps, jailbird tattoos, or talk of white revolution, they might have been just about anyone.
Those four men were the leaders of a notorious neo-nazi gang called Combat 18 - the 1 and 8 in the name signify the position of “A” and “H” ("Adolf Hitler") in the alphabet.
The gang was connected to Loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, a violent “white power” music scene, numerous football hooligan “firms”, and the British National Party (BNP) - the most prominent far-right political movement in modern Britain.
The gang may have crumbled into internecine strife and murder during the 15 months of our encounters - which formed the introduction to my book Homeland - and its dream of an Aryan Homeland in the wilds of Essex was perhaps laughable. But the far Right itself and the tensions which feed it are no longer a joke.
Coming of age
Last month the BNP leader Nick Griffin welcomed the French far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen to the UK. It was a sort of “coming of age” ceremony for Griffin and the BNP - recognition that they might be on the verge of an electoral breakthrough at forthcoming local, European and London elections this June.
Le Pen had recently travelled from his native France where, despite lacking representation at national level, around one in six voters recently supported his Front National (FN) party in regional elections.
In 2002 this notorious godfather of the Right – to whom almost all other far-right parties have paid homage at one time or another – took nearly 20 percent of the vote (over 5.5 million people) and beat Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin into second place.
Le Pen’s Front National has links to other extremist and ultra-nationalist parties across Europe. Even where such links are more tenuous, the FN has often had an influence.
If you look at fledgling movements such as the BNP, you will see imitations of the FN’s web strategies, its media monitoring units, “influence circles”, even down to taking the same name for its annual festival.
Shifting perceptions
Yet despite its political rise, the popular perception of the extreme Right remains latched onto the Combat 18 stereotype.
Perhaps it is comforting to believe that xenophobes and violent racists represent a tiny minority of our populations; that they are not like “us” – rather, that they inhabit some shadowy world from which they lurch every so often into the pages of tabloid newspapers.
Too often I have seen even respected commentators write off the rise of the Right as a mere protest movement. Yet I would argue that the rise of the extreme Right represents the flipside to Al-Qaeda, both physically and metaphorically. As fundamentalism rises in the East, so our own zealots grow here in the West.
Aside from the FN and BNP, there are now prominent extreme Right and anti-immigrant parties across Europe today: in Belgium (the Vlaams Blok); in Norway (Progress Party); Denmark (Danish Peoples Party); in Germany (the Republicans, the German Peoples Union and the skinhead National Democratic Party, plus a dangerous alliance of “comradeship” groups); in Austria (Jörg Haider’s Freedom Party); in the Netherlands (Pim Fortuyn List); in Switzerland (Swiss Peoples Party); in Portugal (Popular Party); and in Italy (Northern League, and the National Alliance).
But perhaps perceptions are shifting. Mainstream politics and public opinion are affected by fears – some would say hysteria – over immigration, asylum, terrorism and Islam. These phrases are often used interchangeably on the street and in casual conversation.
Immigration and terrorism regularly feature among the top voter concerns in rich Western Europe. Demonisation of the “other” is commonplace.
There are widely held beliefs – from the bars of Flanders to the alpine chalets of Bavaria – that someone else must to blame for the breakdown of traditional communities; for the lack of certainty; for the increased pace of change; for job insecurity, higher tax bills, and a loss of belonging and identity in an increasingly globalised world.
Harking back to mythical better times is commonplace among the people I encountered, whether neo-nazi thugs or educated professionals.
I have listened to voters explain that being swamped by asylum seekers causes them to support the far Right, even when I can prove no such asylum seekers exist within their community.
All too often, settled minority communities are tarnished with this same brush, viewed under the label of Allah, as “other”, foreign and alien. Belief is a hard thing to challenge.
The Right also benefits from many first-time voters, as well as from the rise of single-issue politics. Ironically, studies in France showed that the greatest support for parties such as the Front National came from the suburbs, propelled by a fear of “invasion” by the city and its supposed immigrant gangs.
Multiculturalism vs integration?
Strange times are forging stranger alliances. I have witnessed gatherings of Islamic radicals with western Holocaust deniers, united in mutual anti-Semitism.
With anti-Semitic feelings surging across Europe, some Jews have even turned to the far Right as a result of their own fears of attack and intimidation from North African or Turkish youths.
Those same youths are being torn apart by an identity crisis, belonging neither in the West nor to their parents’ culture of the East or South.
After race riots in northern Britain during the summer of 2001, it was revealed that the white and Asian communities had self-segregated long before any mass outbreak of violence. There was little real communication across the divide.
Trevor Phillips, leader of the UK’s Commission for Racial Equality, has recently said that multiculturalism is dead and that integration is the way forward. Rather as with US citizenship rights, European states have begun to emulate the USA and focus on a “greater” embracing identity.
Is this the way forward, or closing the stable door after the horse has bolted?
The coming decades will be a time of identity politics and identity beliefs. If we are to avoid George Orwell’s future (a place where, he said, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever”) we need to take stock now.
Or Orwell’s predictions may be nearer than we think.
The embrace of abortion, homosexuality and, yes, contraception has doomed Europe to oblivion, apparently.
Of course, the land will remain, but, short of some kind of truly miraculous revival of traditional values and religion, the people will disappear.
The Germanic tribes while white were not "Westerners" once either. But as soon as they came over into the Roman world they adopted what was obviously to them a superior and worthy civilization. Arabs will not do that. Remember Arabs pre Islam were themselves members of Hellenistic civilization - the lost city of Petra for example is an example of "Arabic" i.e. Semetic peoples who adopted our civilization.
The Germanic tribes while white were not "Westerners" once either. But as soon as they came over into the Roman world they adopted what was obviously to them a superior and worthy civilization. I should have said MUSLIM Arabs will not do that. Remember Arabs pre Islam were themselves members of Hellenistic civilization - the lost city of Petra for example is an example of "Arabic" i.e. Semetic peoples who adopted our civilization.
Remember that as of 1944, there were more nationalized businesses in Italy than anywhere outside of the USSR.
And that is correct from an American perspective!!
Europeans don't understand the concept of individual freedom because they have NEVER had it!! The State is the source of rights in Europe. A government of the people, by the people and for the people is totally alien to them.
Neocons claim we can do this to the Muslims.
But perhaps perceptions are shifting. Mainstream politics and public opinion are affected by fears – some would say hysteria – over immigration, asylum, terrorism and Islam. These phrases are often used interchangeably on the street and in casual conversation.
The rise of the right will continue as the influx of foreigners increases along with the open borders fostered by the EU and the Mastricht Treaty. The countries of Europe are very nationalistic when it comes to preserving their own cultures. Over the centuries it was a matter of survival, which explains why there are so many countries in a relatively small land area.
The declining native populations throughout Europe, especially in Italy, Hungary, Germany, and others will require more foreigners to maintain their economies. Europe is not used to mass immigration and the assimilation of foreigners. Countries like Germany have laws that make it very difficult for a foreigner to become a citizen. There are over 300,000 Turks (guest workers who have been there for generations) in Berlin alone who are not citizens.
What we are witnessing in Europe is the beginning of a growing reaction of the native populations that see their cultures being eroded and a future where they may be the minority in their own countries. Big problems lie ahead for a continent that is declining and slowly dying. Their political leaders have sold them out in the name of a United Europe.
As I wrote following the smear tactics used agains Le Pen and others, two years ago:
For more on where the real Nazis--not fools in costume--actually stood in the political spectrum, see The Lies Of Socialism.
The milk toast "Conservatives," who let themselves be intimidated into not defending the continuity of their respective nations, deserve the future they are acquiesing in. But the rest of us do not deserve to be dragged there with them. It is long past time that we stopped listening to those who are afraid to address the real issues.
William Flax
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