New study: Europe's far right - anti-EU, pro-Putin, anti-globalization, anti-immigrant, nationalists

[pampango]

Yet despite the extreme Right’s much-vaunted irredentism, it has also mounted strong critiques of the very modern phenomenon of globalization. The internationalization of capitalism, its unprecedented ability to cross the boundaries of national political and legal jurisdictions, has led to a sea-change in the way fascists respond to the vital question ‘where does the national interest lie’. Today, fascist and nationalist movements don’t just wave the flag of the nation-state. Despising the liberal values of Europe, deploring the subservient actions of European governments in the face of the EU’s hegemonizing tendencies, extreme-right leaders gaze admiringly across the EU border to authoritarian leaders abroad, longing for the day when they too can govern illiberally.

But for many of the up-and-coming demagogues of the populist and anti-Communist extreme Right, ranging from UKIP’s Nigel Farage to the FN’s Marine Le Pen, from Gábor Vona of Jobbik to Nikos Michaloliakos of Golden Dawn, it is the autocratic leadership of Russian president Vladimir Putin that is most admired and emulated.

HRF suggests that eight European far-Right parties – the Austrian Freedom Party (FPO), Vlaams Belang of Belgium, the FN in France, the German National Democratic Party, Golden Dawn, Jobbik, Lega Nord in Italy and the Lithuanian Order and Justice party (TT) – have aligned themselves with Russian interests and hints that Russia is funding some or all of these parties. In the context of the ‘Trojan Horse’ theory, the modest gains for the extreme Right in the European parliamentary elections could be seen as ‘a victory for Moscow’.

Despite this analytical weakness, there are solid accounts of the roots of Golden Dawn in its support for past military dictatorships, new information on anti-immigration violence and a welcome critique of the government’s failure to allow non-Greeks the benefits of witness protection schemes (which would have allowed immigrants to give evidence against Golden Dawn), as well as intimations that GD’s ability to maintain seventy offices and distribute food to the poor could be due to the financial backing of major ship owners and businessmen. Rather oddly, though, there is no mention of the mass racial profiling, Operation Zeus, under which, between April 2012 and June 2013, more than 120,000 foreign nationals were subjected to identity checks and countless were exposed to racism, brutality and other abuses of their human rights.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/protecting-european-democracy-or-reviving-the-cold-war-the-rising-tide-of-fascism/5407372