The growth of the extreme right in Europe

[Hannah Bell]

With its decision to halt the expulsion procedures against Thilo Sarrazin and to keep this blatant racist in the ranks of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), German social democracy has moved sharply to the right.

Sarrazin, a former finance senator in the Berlin city government and executive member of the Bundesbank (Federal Bank), advocates racist and social-Darwinist theories—views that, since the defeat of Hitler, were only held in Germany by small groups of die-hard neo-Nazis. In his widely sold book Germany abolishes itself, Sarrazin accuses Muslim immigrants of coming from a long tradition of inbreeding and expressing a genetic deficiency of intelligence. He warns against the conquest of Germany “by fertility” and calls for a strict limitation of immigration. Elsewhere, in the spirit of the Nuremberg racial laws, he claims all Jews share a particular gene.

The SPD justifies its reconciliation with Sarrazin with electoral considerations and “respect for different opinions.” In reality, it is responding to fundamental economic and social changes. The SPD’s right-wing turn is part of a pan-European development.

Increasingly, established parties on the right and left of the bourgeois political spectrum are adopting chauvinism, anti-Islamism and other forms of racism in their political programmes, and reconciling themselves with far-right parties. The media contribute to this right-wing development by boosting right-wing preachers of hate such as Sarrazin and Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French National Front (FN)...With their turn towards the extreme right, the European bourgeoisie is responding to the international financial crisis and the heightening of national antagonisms in Europe.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/may2011/sarr-m09.shtml